


The Galaxy In Flame

by Nybbas



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon Continuation, F/M, Gen, Kylo Ren Redemption, M/M, Original Flavor, Slow Burn, awkward alliances with your enemies to fight bigger enemies, basically just a spec script for Episode IX except in an imaginary good timeline with Carrie Fisher, borrowing selectively from the EU, it's very plot heavy sorry I don't know how to write fanfic properly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-06 05:58:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 72,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13404912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nybbas/pseuds/Nybbas
Summary: The First Order has seized almost total control of the galaxy now under Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, while the remnants of the Resistance try to regroup and find a way to move forward against unbeatable odds. Rey is still lost without a guide, Finn is weighed down by guilt, Poe is struggling to keep it together, and even the ascendent Kylo Ren is unable to escape the pain of his choices. Neither side has yet been able to destroy the other.However, when a threat approaches from beyond the galaxy, more powerful than any empire or republic has ever been, there is only one side any of them are on: survival.





	1. Kindling

The RESISTANCE is on the run. Supreme Leader Kylo Ren and the FIRST ORDER have tightened their hold over the galaxy and only a few systems now question their legitimacy. However, the Resistance fights on and sympathy is beginning to turn in their favor after the story of Luke Skywalker and his last stand spreads from system to system. As General Leia Organa strives to rebuild her movement until it is strong enough to take on the First Order once again, she calls on an old friend to carry out a dangerous mission to find one of the few remaining Kyber crystals that might restore hope to her movement…

***

The dark expanse of the unknown regions rippled slightly. Out beyond the reaches of the old galactic republic most of the stars, moons, and planets were unnamed, uninhabited, and silent. Only the occasional ship ever passed through here now, usually furtively, desperately, and struggling to stay on course through the unmapped maze of gravitational anomalies. But then it rippled, just slightly, and a small silver ship jumped into view. It was not a ship built for battle like the First Order cruisers which had hidden here for years after the fall of the empire, but a small transport vessel of the sort usually used by the wealthy for more discreet pleasure trips. It shimmered under its cloaking for a moment, before pivoting and firing the engines with certainty and purpose.

As the ship turned, its pilot caught a glimpse of the nearest planet glowing pale and quiet in the dark emptiness. It was a silvery white, covered in a thick sheet of ice, but as the ship drew closer, a massive scar of black came into view that stretched nearly all the way around the planet. Its shape was distorted as well, after years of aggressive imperial mining, it had been stripped down to the core.

The silver ship made for a spot near the edge of the scar on the more intact side of the planet. The thin atmosphere barely rocked the ship as it soared down over the deep gouge and then into the ravine. While the surface was barren and flat, the sides of the scar were still lined with the rusting skeletons of mining equipment and a few old imperial transports. The silver ship passed these by as it sunk deeper into the darkness until the ship lights were the only thing visible in the black ravine. Then slowly, a faint blue light blinked up ahead.

The silver ship steered carefully towards the blue light and as it did, a pale glow illuminated a tunnel cut into the side of the rocky wall. The mining had left the rock porous and riddled with such caves, but this was the only one remaining with power. The silver ship set down quietly in the entrance of the tunnel, hissing slightly as it landed and the hum of the engines ceased.

The doors of the silver ship opened and the pilot stepped out. At the same moment, a hanger door opened to reveal an enormous cavern in the rock. The cavern was filled on every wall with the lights of a city, built directly into the rock with a swarm of flying droids and speeders moving across the center. Priam Stead. The last remaining settlement on the once thriving kyber mines of Ilum.

The pilot stepped through the hanger doors and onto an elevator platform which immediately shot up through the city. His hood blew back in the sudden breeze revealing a face lined with age, but retaining a sharp handsomeness. Lando Calrissian. Former Baron Administrator of Cloud City turned Rebellion General and now, retired. His hair and mustache were tipped with a frost of silver, but he still cut a somewhat dashing figure in his black and gold cape.

The elevator platform came to a jerky halt and Lando stepped out onto a busy terrace right along the median of the cavern city. While Priam Stead no longer bustled as it had once done, it was still growing every day with those fleeing the chaos of the First Order. Most of the human population, Lando noted with dis-ease, were the descendents of old imperial mining crews, and while they had not been eager to strike up with the young firebrands of the First Order, they were certainly not friendly to Resistance fighters. Lando drew the hood back over his head and stepped into the crowd.

Most of the streets were bisected by elevator pads that bore crowds up and down the curving walls of the cavern. The horizontal paths were lined already with traders, discreetly gesturing to crates and satchels filled with less than legal items. Lando spotted a Mandalorian woman patting invitingly on a crate that was twitching sporadically and a Dug who offered him an enticing whiff of a bundle of death sticks. A heavily armored Quarren cast him a suspicious look as he passed and Lando’s eyes skimmed over the vials of what were almost certainly virulent poisons he was selling to a masked bounty hunter. Lando walked a little faster. Priam Stead was not a place to stroll easily or let your eyes wander. But Ilum’s ghost town was the only place left in the galaxy where he had a chance of getting what he needed. However distasteful he found it, Lando thought, it was one of the last places that had escaped the oversight and regulation of the First Order.

Finally, he came to the elevator pad he needed and took it up a few levels to a quieter street lined only with a few scrappers sorting through what junk they could still fish out of the old mines. He paused outside of one door cut into the rock of the cavern walls and then pressed his hand to it. After a long moment, it opened and he stepped in. The room was damp and smelled strongly of something sharp and spicy.

“Now what in this whole galaxy could move the famous Lando Calrissian to come all the way out to the Unknown Regions,” a dry voice whispered from the dim room. “Surely not just to see me?”

“You know why I’m here Semke,” Lando said firmly, stepping inside, “You got my order?”

“I have what we agreed upon,” Semke replied. Lando’s eyes adjusted to the dim glow and he saw the long many legged body of his contact suspended in a bubbling tank of coppery liquid. Semke’s pairs of yellow eyes blinked at him from a long narrow cranium.

“Then let’s get this over with,” Lando said, “I’m afraid these aren’t good times for me to stay and chat.”

“Certainly,” Semke said, one long leg extending out of the tub to hook the drawstring of a little bag, “but just to ensure my interests here are all protected, I am rather curious as to why you need a Kyber crystal. Surely Lando Calrissian of all people isn’t planning to build a laser sword and take on the First Order?”

“I’m just here as a favor to an old friend, Semke, you know I don’t do that kind of thing anymore. I look out for the people I care about and I stay away from First Order trouble,” Lando interjected sharply. He trusted Semke Zoy about as far as he could throw him, and considering the creature’s long entwining body, it wasn’t far. But nevertheless, he was certain the creature wouldn’t betray him to the First Order.

“So I’ve heard, Lando, you’ve been off the grid, but you seem to be thriving all things considered,” Semke said, one pair of eyes scanning his cape. “But if you’ve fallen under the spell of Skywalker’s sacrifice, you won’t be so finely attired for long. The Resistance is fighting a losing battle.”

“You don’t need to tell me that,” Lando said, advancing into the room and reaching for the bag with the crystal inside. “Whichever side ends up on top this time, it will only be a matter of years before the pendulum swings back the other way. I watched it happen to the New Republic and I’m sure I’ll see it plenty more before I’m through.”

Semke made a rattling sound in his throat that Lando took to be a laugh. His spiny leg drew back, keeping the crystal still just out of reach.

“I’m only three hundred years old, Lando, my own people would taunt me for my youthful vigor,” he hissed, “and here you are acting as weary as the eldest.”

“Listen, Semke, stop fooling around and hand over the Kyber crystal. I’ve already paid you more than enough,” Lando said finally, exasperated. “Don’t pretend you don’t know who it's for. Leia Organa is an old friend, and I still owe her even if I haven’t pledged to the cause.”

Semke dropped the little bag into Lando’s hand and then suddenly, with nearly blinding speed, he curled up until his long sloping head was nearly touching Lando’s.

“Listen carefully,” he hissed, “you need to leave here as soon as you can. And don’t look back. Just get as far as you can. You may pretend that you’ve given up taking sides and I hope that’s true. Because what is coming is the only enemy you’re all going to need.”

“I- Semke I don’t understand,” Lando stammered, resisting to urge to flinch back from the creature who for the first time, seemed actually worried about something.

“You can’t do anything for me,” Semke rasped, “but if you can get out, maybe warn someone, you might have a chance. Tell the Resistance. Tell the First Order. It doesn’t matter because-”

His voice cut off abruptly. All four eyes rolled up and his many limbs spasmed for a few seconds. The tissue around the base of his skull blanched suddenly white and Lando thought he saw something black, shiny, but undeniably alive skitter off into the darkness. He seized the falling body before it collapsed back into the liquid to inspect it and saw with revulsion a deep but needle-thin hole in Semke’s thickly plated skin, not bloody or draining like the bite of something poisonous, but surgical.

Lando let go and the long twisting body fell back into the fluid. He didn’t need to be told twice to run. He ran.

Bursting out of the house with as much subtlety as he could manage, he walked briskly back towards the elevator platform, keeping his head down and his hand in his pocket firmly clasped around the Kyber crystal. His mind was racing, trying to understand what he’d just witnessed. Semke had hundreds of warrants to his name, but none of them he’d ever heard of sent assassins like that. Furthermore, he had never seen anything scare the three hundred year old rogue, not the Empire, not the First Order, not even the Sith.

As he folded himself back into the crowded market on the lower level he glanced over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of a tall figure in a dark cloak turning to follow him. Lando cursed under his breath and tried to duck down as he sped towards the tunnel where his ship was waiting. But as he glanced back again he saw that the crowd behind him was parting, dispersing almost in awe of the large cloaked shadow. Lando broke into a light jog. His eyes met the Dug with the deathsticks again but this time he could see something black sticking up from the nape of its neck as well.

Lando forced himself into a crowd of tall Cereans for cover. The one directly behind him immediately fell and Lando saw to his horror that he was spasming on the ground, a black creature on the base of his neck flexing its legs deep into his nervous system. The figure in the dark cloak drew closer and the rest of the Cereans scattered.

Lando began to sprint. If he could make it to the elevator in time, he could leave his pursuer trapped on an upper level. But when he skidded to a halt in the plaza where he had arrived, the elevator was stopped already far above him. Cursing under his breath, Lando judged the distance back down to the tunnel where he’d entered. At least two hundred feet, assuming he could even land properly on the walkway. He glanced over his shoulder to see the dark figure enter the plaza behind him.

Lando’s hand went to the blaster, but at the last second he remembered the Mandalorian woman with the twitching crate. Taking a gamble, he shoved her out of the way and fired twice at the crate’s lock. The crate exploded open and to his great relief, it was packed full of highly poisonous kinraths. As soon as the box was open the plaza broke into a complete pandemonium. The four legged arachnoids were suddenly leaping everywhere, spraying toxins from long segmented tubes at anything with a heat signature. The cloaked figure vanished into the crowd as a stampede away from the plaza began. Lando vaulted back towards the elevator, but to his horror he saw that it was occupied and seemed about to pass by his platform without stopping.

He jumped after it, his legs cycling once in the empty air for a second before he landed roughly on the platform, just barely catching at the railing around the edge and keeping himself from sliding off and down to the bottom of the cavern. As he grunted and scrambled back to his feet, the somewhat ruffled human occupant, a withered older fellow, stared at him before instinctively grabbing at the back of his own neck.

“What are you-?” the old man began, but Lando took the opportunity to step onto the railing and leap off as soon as they approached the platform in front of the hanger tunnel. Better not to stay and chat any longer or whatever that black thing was would put more of them into a fatal seizure.

Breathing a sigh of relief as he rolled to his feet, Lando pressed the button to open the hangar doors again. His sigh came prematurely.

Just as the doors hissed open, the black cloaked figure landed beside him on the platform with a bone shaking crash. The platform groaned under the force, and Lando saw a sizable dent where the creature had fallen, but improbably, it slowly rose to its feet, apparently unharmed by the drop. Lando staggered back, grasping wildly for his blaster. The creature let its cloak drop and Lando saw something unlike anything he’d ever seen before.

Its body was large, humanoid but incredibly powerful. Its head was sharp and jagged, ridged along the forehead, and its nose was short and high on its face. But more disturbingly, the creature was covered in scars. Some Lando took to be ritual or decorative, but others were clearly the result of extensive and invasive surgery. Thick twisting scars across the chest or through the stomach. Lando’s breath caught for a moment as he realized that some of the creature’s skin or even a few of its limbs seemed to be a slightly different color or slightly mismatched in size.

“Stop running,” the creature said, and it smiled, drawing back thin lips from a mouth filled with a conglomeration of several different types of fangs.

Nothing could have made Lando run faster. He fired the blaster blindly behind him as he ran, diving into his ship and jamming at the button to close the doors, firing until they finally sealed. Not even bothering to buckle into the pilots seat, he merely dragged himself to the consul to initiate a launch. His heart pounded and he slammed his fist against the controls as she ship took a few seconds to warm up to full power.

“Come on,” he whispered frantically, firing the thrusters recklessly to get out of the tunnel as quickly as he could manage.

Something hit the side of the ship hard. Lando glanced back towards it and saw that whatever the thing was outside, it had put a deep dent in the door with only one first. An alarm started signaling that the door might not properly seal.

Lando took off anyways. He blasted forward out of the tunnel, scraping some of the reflective stealth paint off of the side of his ship. As he burst out of the tunnel, he fired hard up out of the gorge, slamming himself against the back wall in the process. Leaving the computers to take him out of atmo, he lurched out to try to repair the door. There was no time to reseal now, he understood, so the best he could do was clap a pressure shield over the whole thing and worry about getting out later.

The ship soared up away from Ilum and Lando skidded back into the pilot’s seat, finally managing to strap in to the chair this time. His heart was still pounding, but after a few frantic seconds of patting his pockets he found the little bag containing the Kyber crystal again. As soon as he was back with Leia and the Resistance, he would be out and whatever that creature was he’d never have to look it in the eye again. Let Luke’s protege figure it out. Or let Leia and her bombers blast it out of the sky.

He dragged his cape up to wipe his face and for a second pinched his eyes to relieve the sudden adrenaline hangover.

When he opened them everything was blurry for a moment. The darkness of the Unknown Regions. A few blurry moons. And something else.

Lando leaned forward in his seat. He felt his hands begin to tremble on the controls. Something else was rippling under heavy cloaking out here in the Unknown Regions. Something massive orbiting Ilum. For a second something shimmered in front of him as he scraped right under it. It was like a ship, but nearly the size of a moon, and what was stranger, it was alive. He was certain for a moment that he saw the massive ship breathe.

Lando gunned his engines without even bothering to check his course and the expensive First Order maps he’d paid a small fortune for. He jumped to hyperspace.

***

General Gaitus Avadear strode quickly down the mirror black halls of the recently constructed Dreadnaught Incinerator. His boots clicked on the still pristine surface but he felt his lip curl as he took in the shoddy, slapped together look of the bolting and sealing. Like most constructions of the First Order, it was hasty.

General Avadear was just beginning to push into his fifties, but unlike many of his comrades who were old Imperial holdovers wrestling with the younger recruits for dominance, he’d never made the rank of officer in the empire. Gaitus Avadear was a former TIE pilot, a damn good one at that, and he made sure that the lower ranking schemers remembered it. He kept himself trim, sharp in profile, and his hair cropped close.  
As the General reached the end of the hallway a pair of massive blast doors hissed open and a few rows of stormtroopers stepped back to allow him past. But as he stepped into the large room beyond, he immediately noticed that the polished black throne at the center was empty, and he could not resist rolling his eyes slightly.

While he’d had no deep love for Snoke, the new Supreme Leader was exactly the sort of young, reckless, zealot likely to send all of them scrambling back to the Unknown Regions as the Galaxy chafed under his inconsistent brutality. His eyes flicked over the room and he noticed the lurking figure of one of his colleagues. General Hux was not usually one for skulking when there was attention to be had, but he’d been somewhat subdued after the disastrous pursuit of the Resistance that had left them with nothing but a massive hole in their largest ship.

“Any update on the whereabouts of our Supreme Leader this time?” General Avadear called lightly to Hux. “Surely not still out shooting down ships and interrogating slumlords?”

“Worse,” Hux said with a grimacing smile. The shadows beneath his eyes were darker than usual and General Avadear took the time to note the toll falling out of favor had taken on the younger man. “He spent the morning vaporizing the Makinen corporation and ordering troopers to seize their factories in five systems.”

“The Makinen corporation has been behind us since the empire fell!” General Avadear couldn’t stop himself from displaying at least a subdued version of alarm. “They’ve been building us ships off the record for almost thirty years!” Hux laughed humorlessly.

“Well if the Supreme Leader finds your organization corrupt, it burns. We’re burning everything now. Down to the waterline, as it were,” Hux said, and General Avadear finally began to understand the reason for the man’s anxious pallor. By all reason, Hux was likely next.

“The Makinen Corporation were corrupt. Of course they were corrupt, they’d funded us illegally for years. But they were on our side, only a fool would…” General Avadear muttered.

“A fool or a madman?” Hux offered, “he’s down with his knights now. Training his little personal army. That is, if you’d like to address these complaints in person?”

General Avadear did not smile, but merely nodded. While Hux was clearly self-destructing, Gaitus Avadear was not a man who felt his own emotions with particular strength or interest. He would win them this war, and if the Supreme Leader would rather purge his own people before worrying about securing his position in every system of the galaxy, Gaitus Avadear would gladly offer up his windpipe to be crushed.

The lower decks of the Dreadnaught Incinerator were mainly used as large open hangers for smaller ships, but one in particular had been converted into a sort of temple for the Knights of Ren. While Snoke had never had much interest in leaving his private quarters, it seemed the new Supreme Leader was still hungry to train. General Avadear had heard the rumors about special operations recruiting hundreds of children to search for those sensitive to the Force, and while he had no such sneering distaste for the old religions as some of his imperial predecessors, he saw no use in training children to block blasters with their eyes closed when they could be learning to operate heavy artillery without the aid of some mystical connective magic.

When he reached the deck he was greeted with the sight of several dozen children of various ages, dressed identically in simple black robes, standing in a line. In front of them was a row of floating metal orbs which were humming slightly with what must be a low electrical charge. General Avadear glanced briefly around the room to see the other Knights of Ren standing around the edges, all masked and heavily armed. None of the high ranking officers had ever been given much information on the Knights of Ren or their master, but Snoke had encouraged them not to ask. They were simply requested to give them full access whenever they arrived and provide anything they might want without question.

At the center of the room Supreme Leader Kylo Ren was pacing along the line of children, seemingly inspecting them as another masked knight gave instruction. He still wasn’t wearing the helmet, General Avadear noted, but he had added back his dark cowl and robe which gave a certain authoritative grandeur to his usual simple black. Recovered totally now from his various injuries, General Avadear could only barely make out the line of the scar still crossing his thin face.

Unlike Hux, General Avadear had no personal hatred for the man. He was young, certainly, but he fought well, flew better, and understood the specs of a ship more than many of his officers. Still, Avadear had once fought well, flown better, and known a TIE like he’d built it from scap, and he hadn’t jumped out of his cockpit ready to lead an army. If the Supreme Leader could simply be polished, let himself be coaxed out of erratic fury for long enough to think, the situation was salvageable.

“The ball will hurt you if it touches you,” said the knight training the children, voice distorted into an anonymous blur. “Let yourself be afraid of it. Use your fear to stop it. Don’t let it hurt you.”

Abruptly the metal orbs shot forward and each child threw up their hands. A few of the orbs simply dropped to the ground, a few hovered quivering in midair, two merely slowed to a sticky crawl, and one smacked audibly into the hand of a young boy, perhaps only seven or eight years old. General Avadear heard a faint hissing burn as the metal touched the child’s skin. The boy stifled a cry of pain as he seized his hand and the orb returned to floating in front of him.

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren stopped as he reached the boy, who immediately blinked back his tears and stood up straight again, trembling.

“It’s alright,” Kylo Ren said, low voice surprisingly calm and expressionless. “Pain doesn’t mean that you failed.”

“I can’t stop it,” the boy said, bowing his head, “I’m not strong enough.”

“Then don’t stop it,” Kylo Ren said flatly. He held up one hand and pulled off his leather glove. Then, slowly, deliberately, he reached out and wrapped his fingers around the metal orb. General Avadear couldn’t help but wince as he watched the metal glow with sudden heat and the Supreme Leader’s skin growing raw and red. For a moment his hand trembled.

And then abruptly the metal orb buckled inwards and compacted into a jagged piece of scrap which dropped with a dull thud onto the floor.

“If you can’t stop it just by fearing the pain, then destroy it,” Kylo Ren said without any trace of discomfort in his voice. “Fear is only one path to the force. Remind yourself sometimes of the pain, feel it, and then rip it apart.”

The boy stared for a moment at the crumpled metal on the floor, and then very slowly, reached out his injured hand and picked it up again. There was a faint high pitched squeal and it slowly tore into two pieces.

Kylo Ren stepped back, and then abruptly stopped. His eyes widened just a fraction and he suddenly clamped his burned hand into a fist. General Avadear followed his gaze, but there was nothing. He was simply staring fixated for a moment at a patch of wall. The general considered again what Hux had mentioned about madness.

Then just as suddenly as it had come on, he snapped back, noticing General Avadear waiting beside the door.

“Let them try again,” Kylo Ren said over his shoulder to the other knight, as he turned towards the door, “and get this one a bacta wrap.”

General Avadear took care to duck his head subserviently as the Supreme Leader strode towards him.

“Supreme Leader, I’d like to request a moment of your time,” he said brusquely. He was not a man who flattered by principal.

“And what exactly do you need my time for?” Kylo Ren asked, tone now short.

“A number of the high command have some concerns they have asked me to bring to you. We had hoped you might give a few of us an audience,” General Avadear replied.

“An audience with the Supreme Leader to assuage your concerns,” Kylo Ren pondered, “General, perhaps you should find some less intrusive way to manage your anxieties.”

With that he seemed to consider the conversation over and brushed out through the door.

“I’m afraid the high command can be irrational, Supreme Leader,” General Avadear said, following him out into the hall, “but you can hardly blame them. If one untrained girl can take down you and a room full of highly trained guards, who knows what sort of damage she can do out there if we do not capture her.”

A low sound filled General Avadear’s ears for a second, almost subsonic and so deep as to be imperceptible. For a moment he felt a sensation of pressure, as though he’d been thrown abruptly through a faulty airlock, but then it passed. Still, he had succeeded in making the Supreme Leader angry, that much was certain.

Kylo Ren paused for another second before answering.

“Fine then,” he finally said, turning back to him with only a faint quiver of an angry smile playing at the edge of his mouth, “let’s go talk about the girl.”

Back in the throne room only a few officers had been bold enough to assemble. Captain Vardmon was there naturally as she’d been primarily responsible for building new ships and Colonol Boringr who’d had his whole research facility shut down. General Hux had surprisingly stuck around.

Kylo Ren reclined slowly into the hard black metal of the throne and then gave them an irritable jerk of the head to indicate that they should speak.

“Supreme Leader, some of your officers have become concerned about how we are allocating our resources,” General Avadear said, picking a pragmatic term for it. “We are on the verge of securing total control over the galaxy, establishing as you might say, a second galactic empire. While I certainly would not question your orders, I have concerns that now is not the most efficient time to be purifying our supply chain or cutting off some of our more unsavory allies.”

“The Makinens were our best ship builders, despite what you might think of their factories-” Captain Vardmon interjected before nervously cutting herself off.

“Our interests are the interests of the First Order. The plan we had under Snoke was to establish Imperial rule, to bring regulation to a chaotic galaxy, and only then to begin scrubbing out those dark spots that we once strategically allowed to thrive…” General Avadear continued, before trailing off at the sight of the Supreme Leader’s face.

“Well then you’ve found the source of your confusion, General,” Kylo Ren said slowly, “I am not Snoke. And we are not rebuilding an empire that let itself be destroyed from within. So once you begin to understand that you are following me now and that we will only bring order to the galaxy if we stop clinging to our old, dirty secrets, then perhaps some of your concerns will be… assuaged.”

General Avadear felt the back of his closely cropped head prickle.

“But Ren, if you spend all our time on tearing apart our allies and ignoring the rebel scum you let walk out a back door on Crait-” General Hux burst out, before he was suddenly flung forward onto the floor into a pose of groveling submission.

“You’re worried perhaps that a group of barely thirty officers and a handful of pilots with only one ship will overthrow us?” Kylo Ren said, seeming to find some genuine pleasure in the interaction for the first time.

“Their numbers aren’t what concerns me, and anyone who isn’t a fool should have noticed they’re rebuilding. Slowly, but they’re recruiting,” General Hux spat, keeping his head down towards the floor and his ginger hair hanging limply over his eyes.

“Well I would hate to allocate resources improperly towards another jaunt of chasing the Resistance around the galaxy,” Kylo Ren said blandly, “we seem to lose ships even faster that way with you in charge. But if you’re so anxious about the matter, I’m certain that if I place you personally in charge of hunting down the Resistance you’ll rise to the occasion. Think of it as… redemption.”

General Hux scrambled back to his feet, pale and sickly looking at the thought. But after meeting the Supreme Leader’s eyes, he finally tossed his hair back and nodded.

“Thank you, Supreme Leader,” he said, unable to hide the quiver in his voice, “I’ll take the fleet-”

“You’ll take a destroyer,” Kylo Ren said, “just one should be enough. Something they can’t cut through too quickly.”

Hux choked something down and then nodded again.

“Then I will consider your concerns addressed for now,” Kylo Ren said.

General Avadear watched as he pulled the leather glove back from his belt and tugged it down over his hand. While the others might not have seen the deep red burn, the General could not stop his lip from curling as the stiff leather dragged down over the man’s palm. This was a situation, he decided, that would not do to be messily resolved. He needed time to understand exactly what was at play, and if that meant letting General Hux walk purposefully into his own grave, so be it.

Who knows, General Avadear thought as he took his leave with a deep bow, perhaps he would find the Resistance, whatever was left of it.


	2. The Spark

Sunrise on Selvaris was only five hours after the last sunset. Although the Resistance had blacked out the windows of the old plantation they used as barracks, there wasn’t much they could do about the rising steamy heat that began as soon as the first sun broke over the horizon and onto the jungle.

Finn wasn’t used to the heat. He didn’t sleep well in his cramped barracks cot, even after he peeled off his shirt and lay on top of his sheet. As soon as the sun came up and the humidity started to turn the air into a fine mist, Finn was awake and had to wait with his thoughts until his shift on duty.

As a trickle of sweat ran through his hair, he finally gave up and rolled out of the cot, quietly picking his way out of the room of his sleeping comrades. There weren’t many of them left. A few were new and still had a bit of freshness that kept them tending to their uniforms and rinsing out the sweat stains, but the old hands didn’t give anyone trouble either way. Finn cast a glance back down the row of cots as he slipped out of the barracks and he felt a lump rise in his throat. There were twenty three pilots here on Selvaris. That was it.

While he understood why General Organa had made the call and had them divide into three separate bases, it didn’t stop him from feeling personally responsible for those left behind. It was safer this way, he knew that. And they needed him here, running missions. He’d be no help to Leia running recruitment with his face plastered on every bounty hunter’s highest priority screen. He’d be useless with Admiral Vulwuakk trying to sneak onto the core worlds without a clue how to act like anything but a stormtrooper. But he couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt. He’d left Rose behind. She’d still been sleeping after the surgery when they split off. He hadn’t even said thank you.

Finn padded quietly down the crumbling corridor of the old plantation. It was some remnant of a failed business scheme to harvest fruit for cheap and ship it back compressed into a paste to save a few credits. While it didn’t have much in the way of useful tech apart from a broken fruit compressor, it was off the grid, thoroughly forgotten, and it offered at least some protection from the afternoon downpours.

The inside of the building felt stifling, so Finn hoisted himself through a part of the wall which had fallen in and scrambled up onto the roof. If nothing else, there was plenty of fruit, though what he wanted was caf or something to help him stay awake.

“Finn!” a surprised voice greeted him as he pulled himself up to the roof, “you’re not supposed to be up for another two hours! We’re supposed to fly out to the Fornax moon.”

Commander Poe Dameron, current officer in charge of the Selvaris base, was sitting in his shirtsleeves and peeling a cluster of large sour berries that left most of the other pilots coughing and wiping their tongues. He thrived in the heat, it seemed to Finn. His skin gave off a coppery shine rather than seeming greasy or flushed, and his hair in the humidity became a sort of shiny cloud of dark curls. His eyes, however, were tired despite the smile. None of them were just bouncing back.

“Too hot to sleep,” Finn sighed and sat down cross-legged in front of his friend. “And… just worried.”

“Look, buddy, Rey will be back any day now. She can take care of herself out there, plus she’s had a great big Wookie looking after her at recruitment,” Poe reassured him, easily clapping a comforting hand over his shoulder. Finn was still getting used to the casual pleasant way that people just reached out and touched one another here, but despite a little discomfort, he didn’t want it to stop.

“Sure, you’re right. I mean, she’s probably heading back now,” Finn said. Poe offered him one of the peeled berries and he declined as vehemently as he could without seeming rude. “I still just feel like… like I need to be doing something more. More than just smuggling supplies and shooting down surveillance droids. Actually fighting.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Poe said, running his hand through his hair. “Come on, run me through the mission. Take my mind off of this.”

“First Order is draining algae from the Fornax ocean moon. Locals are resisting but they’ll have taken nearly a year’s supply of food into their tanks by tomorrow,” Finn recited, “we’ve got to find a way in undetected and then get inside their ships to try to stop them from taking more. You do have a way to get us down undetected right?”

“Finn, who are you talking to?” Poe grinned, popping one of the sour berries into his mouth and chewing like it was nothing, “There’s no large ships monitoring the area, we’ve just got to ghost the radar scans.”

“And do we have any ships that can cloak? Or even disrupt a signal?” Finn asked doubtfully.

“Don’t need one. We’re going to fly very… carefully,” Poe said and Finn instinctively felt a current of fear. He tried to give Poe a confident smile and when his face didn’t seem to move right, he added an encouraging thumbs up. Poe raised an eyebrow.

“It’ll be fine. It’s always fine. Except when it’s not fine and we lose an entire fleet because we screw up,” Finn shrugged, sucking in a few breaths. The breaths seemed to be coming too quickly. “Nope. I’m fine.”

“Hey... hey,” Poe said, his face earnest and open despite the shadows under his eyes. It was moments like this where Finn could almost see General Organa’s influence shining through him. “We’ve got this. You’re going to do great. I know you’re worrying about going back in the uniform, but I promise you that I’ll get us out.”

Finn let his shoulders unclench a little. It was just a uniform. Just a costume now.

But two hours later as he slid on the lightly scuffed white armor over his familiar black, it didn’t feel like a costume. They’d salvaged a few of the best preserved bits of stormtrooper armor from a previous mission, and while there were a few cracks, as long as no one inspected them too closely Finn could pass for a guard. He knew, after all, the right things to say. But he left the helmet off for the trip down to the surface.

Rather than taking one of the precious remaining X-wings, Poe had fueled up an old G1X short hauler to get them to Fornax and, presumably, down onto the moon. It wasn’t a subtle or pristine little craft, but it was easy to repair and hard to break. As Finn stepped up into the passenger bay at the back, he heard the whirring spin of BB-8 barreling around inside, sending sparks flying up around the door to the cockpit.

“Should I worry?” he asked the droid as the engines coughed a little upon starting.

The droid burbled something to the effect that Finn would worry no matter what was fixed, which was not an encouraging response.

The hauler didn’t have a gun except what BB-8 had fused onto the front, and so Finn and Poe both had to stuff into the tiny cockpit with Poe flying the ship and Finn keeping an eye on scopes in case he needed to spin their tiny canon, dangling from the bottom with only one awkward manual wheel set into the floor to turn it.

“We’ll go dark on comms, but if we aren’t back by our final check-in, send one of the droids to scan close-range encoded,” Poe said to one of the Togruta pilots, a new recruit named Ozesha Ilu, before sliding easily into his seat and strapping in. Finn took his place crammed in next to Poe and cast one forlorn look back out at the little party of Resistance pilots who had gathered to wish them off. People took the time to say goodbye more often these days.

Then the ship took off and Finn let all of his guilt and anxiety stay back on the ground. He had a mission now. He had work to do.

“We’ll jump to the opposite side of the moon,” Poe said as the hauler coasted easily up through the heavy clouds. “Just to be certain no one’s looking. We don’t expect that they’ve installed hyperspace tracking on a small refill tanker yet, but just to be sure we don’t jump back to base unless we’re certain no one has made us.”

“And if someone does make us?” Finn asked, “we don’t have much to shoot our way out with.”

“Do like we did back on Ankus,” Poe said with a shrug. Finn grinned fondly. They might not be doing much real damage to the First Order anymore, but Poe hadn’t yet lost his touch for pissing them off.

The ship’s hyperspace drive wound up to a teeth rattling hum and then they jumped. They were soon floating in front of a small moon, a swirling grey of cloud and water. It wasn’t a particularly useful or strategic moon to control, but now that the Core Worlds were subdued, more and more First Order ships needed refueling spots out at the rim.

Finn checked the scopes as they emerged, but there were no ships anywhere nearby to pick up. Scanners and spy drones, however, he was picking up all around the orbit.

“We’ve got a lot of eyes up here,” Finn reported, “so I’m really really hoping your plan accounted for that. And that the plan is not just land on the opposite side and swim around.”

“Just give it a second,” Poe said, his voice distant with concentration.

“I’ll give it three minutes before one of the droids circling this thing picks us up,” Finn said, keeping his eyes fixed on the scopes in front of him. “You could try coming around in orbit, keep everything off so we look like scrap like on that run to Ylix?”

“Bud, this place is pristine,” Poe scoffed, “trust me when I tell you that I have a plan. A real, actual, not insane plan this time.”

BB-8 beeped soothingly in agreement. But then again when did BB-8 not back up everything Poe did?

“Well this plan better start soon unless it involves us getting immediately picked up by this inbound droid scanner,” Finn said, rubbing his forehead.

Poe was quiet, which didn’t seem good, but he was also watching the scope now.

“We left on time,” he murmured to himself, “to the second.”

Then just as the words left his mouth, something else jumped into orbit directly above them. Poe seized the controls and levelled the ship until they were almost touching the bottom of a massive freighter.

“This is the plan?” Finn couldn’t help but yelp as the hauler rocked slightly under the pressure from the freighter’s engines. “The plan is get crushed by another ship?”

“The plan is stay close enough to a legitimate trade ship with all the official passes to land so that we look like nothing but an extra cargo hold,” Poe said through clenched teeth as he steadied the rocking hauler, “...and stay far enough away that we don’t get crushed by another ship.”

“And you’re just going to… to do that?” Finn stuttered, trailing off as Poe Dameron began to do exactly that. The man was an incredible pilot. It was sort of unfair.

“BB-8 make sure that stabilizer doesn’t shake,” Poe said, his voice soft and almost trance-like, as he touched the controls with such delicacy he could have been painting. Finn squeezed his eyes shut as the ship tilted just a little too close for a second.

“So I’m assuming we intercepted a flight plan for this ship before we even planned the mission?” Finn asked as they began to slope down towards the clouds.

“I’m not really able to talk right now,” Poe breathed, “I know we usually have sort of a banter thing going, but… yeah, I can’t really do that.”

The ship began to shudder faintly and Finn heard a distressed flurry of beeping coming from below where BB-8 had hopped after the stabilizer. Poe hissed a little through his teeth. Finn found himself suddenly transfixed by the other man’s profile and a single drop of sweat that was making a slow path down the side of his nose. He was biting his bottom lip. Then the shuddering finally stopped and Finn realized he’d been holding his breath. Poe gave one short sniff to signal his relief and they levelled off with the bottom of the freighter again as it descended through the clouds.

The Fornax moon was a turbulent grey-green ocean, intermittently punctured by a few grey landing platforms. The top of the square platforms were metal, made for landing ships and trading, but below they were intricate webs of a porous grey stone that descended down thousands of feet to the rocky surface of the moon. From what Finn knew, it was usually warm here, creating water rich in nutrients and various lifeforms. The only sentient locals were an amphibious species who called themselves Pheilyns and didn’t go off world much, but they’d gotten their hands on at least enough tech to send out a call for help when the First Order showed up and started skimming the water for food and fuel. The platforms were theirs originally, built as partially submerged tower cities, but now co-opted by the First Order into loading docks for the biofuel they processed.

As the freighter descended towards one of the platforms, Finn noticed what first appeared to be a massive grey island that upon further inspection turned out to be the massive hull of a First Order tanker ship. The top was their usual intersystem transit, but it had been melded with a modified tanker at the bottom so that it could fight or flee at a moments notice. Finn caught a brief glimpse of the greenish water foaming as some massive machine sucked it down into the depths of the ship to be stripped of anything valuable.

Before the freighter could land on top of them, Poe pulled their ship out with one hard push backwards, and the hauler slipped below the metal platform and into cranny in the rocks below.

“It’ll be tight getting out,” Poe said, finally sighing as the ship powered down and flicking his damp hair out of his eyes, “but no one else is parking down here.”

Finn clasped the other man firmly by the shoulders.

“That,” he said, “was incredible.”

Poe grinned, letting his cocky self-assurance melt away into giddy relief.

“Yeah, it was,” he agreed. “BB-8, stay here and don’t let my ship flood.”

The door of the hauler hissed open and Finn had a whiff of the planet’s pungent smell of salt and fishy mud. They were greeted as they got out by two of the Pheilyns, who turned out to be small and greyish themselves, with a fringe of external gill stalks surrounding their heads.

“Welcome Resistance heroes,” said one of the Pheilyns who seemed to be the only one in possession of a translator, a little battered and outdated at that. His voice was sticky and a bit pinched in the sinuses. “We are honored to fight alongside of you.”

Finn stepped out slowly, keeping the stormtrooper helmet tucked under his arm.

“Thank you for all of your help,” Poe replied graciously, easily brushing off the reverent tone of the Pheilyn with a friendly retort. “You’re the only reason we could even make it down here.”

The creatures both smoothed their gill crests for a second in an almost demure gesture.

“We know,” said the one of the translator, “that we are a small people and our problem with the First Order is small. But we thank you for coming despite that. Without the algae in those tanks, many broods will starve.”

“Are your people ready as soon as we get in?” Finn asked.

“Do it quickly,” the Pheilyn said, “we’re ready.”

Finn cast a quick glance at Poe and drew one last quick breath. Then he brought the helmet down over his head. The smell of the sea vanished and all that remained was the sound of his own rapidly accelerating breath.

“How does it fit?” he tried to joke, but the sound of his own distorted voice coming through the helmet spoiled any trace of humor.

“Looks awful, let’s get this over with,” Poe said, “take me prisoner and get up there.”

There was only a short and unpleasant climb up to the metal platform with only a few slick metal rails to grab, but once they were up top they had to blend in. The freighter they’d followed down was still unloading, but several barge hovercraft of First Order troopers accompanied by one bored looking officer had touched down to clear the ship before they could bring anything out to sell.

Ignoring all his instincts, Finn walked straight towards the troopers, reporting to the ranking trooper before the officer as he’d been taught.

“Sir we have a possible stower trying to crawl out of a droid panel,” Finn said, keeping Poe firmly locked in the standard trooper hold for non-hostile arrests. “Do you want me to take him back to fill out the 745 or pass it up the line?”

The lead trooper glanced over to the officer. Finn focused all his energy on staying still, calm, and praying with all his might that the trooper wouldn’t check his ID tags. The trooper turned back towards him and started to reach for something at his belt.

“Just take him in yourself,” the trooper said, tossing Finn a card and gesturing towards a row of individually sized hover skiers lining one edge of the metal platform. “Or we’ll be out here all morning training on infractions intakes.”

“Yes sir,” Finn replied, feeling his chest relax a little, “I’ll keep it above the niners.”

And with that they turned away and Finn marched Poe towards the row of skiers as fast he as could without suspicion.

“That went okay,” Poe muttered encouragingly as they reached the edge.

“Yeah, that part did,” Finn said, cuffing Poe firmly into the sidecar of the skier. “This part, though, might not. I have never driven one of these in my life, not even in sims.”

“Just punch it and steer,” Poe shrugged, “same as anything else.”

Finn cleared his throat a little and inserted the card. The skier blinked to life and Finn gripped the hand controls a second before it dropped abruptly down to the water level and then hovered a few inches above the spray.

“Can I ask why it bothers you so much?” Poe called over the hum and the sloshing of the waves. “I mean, I understand the helmet, but why the impersonation.”

Finn slowly pushed forward on the controls and the skier moved forward surprisingly smoothly.

“I don’t know if I can really explain it in a way you’ll understand,” Finn called back.

“Well, try me,” Poe replied, “and I’ll compliment your piloting skills.”

Finn smiled a little, feeling his face move in vain beneath the cold white helmet. He couldn’t even feel the water as they coasted towards the massive First Order tanker.

“When I left I did it because I couldn’t kill for them,” Finn said finally, “but not just killing enemies. I couldn’t let them kill my squad. We were supposed to leave behind anyone who endangered the mission. And so when I left I promised myself I wouldn’t just follow a cause anymore, I’d follow people. Just people I cared about. But some of those people… well some of them are still under a helmet somewhere out there.”

“You’re doing the right thing, Finn,” Poe assured him, “I know you think you’re… leaving people behind, but you haven’t abandoned them. Rose is still out there fighting. Rey too, just in her own way. We’re all still together even scattered across the galaxy. We’re still united by the light.”

Finn let his face be unreadable beneath the mask. Poe would console his guilt over Rose, over letting Rey fly off on her own, but never for his old First Order squad.

Finn steered the skier to a slightly less graceful halt in front of one of the water level side ports. Something scanned his skier ID and circular door slowly rotated open into a parking hanger with a dripping grated floor.

“Our friends think the main engineering deck is in the lower left section,” Poe said, swinging his legs off of the sidecar before Finn had even finished uncuffing them. “And we don’t have a lot of time to chat so let’s hope the halls aren’t busy before we find a service elevator.”

Finn and Poe stepped out of the hanger and into the corridor beyond. Poe gave a long sigh.

“Well I don’t think we’re going to find a service elevator,” Finn said, staring down the massive grated staircase they were now confronted with. The interior of the tanker was exposed, drafty, and decidedly lacking in comfort, but at least it wasn’t crowded.

“I hope you can climb quickly,” Poe said, starting down the long staircase as quickly as he could.

They descended a couple floors in wet, slippery boots, encountering no one but a few droids. Finn peeked into a few halls as they went down, but most of them were maintenance rather than engineering. Finally, as they neared the bottom of the stairs, the low rumble of the massive pumps started to fill the air, suggesting that they might be at least close. Finn stuck his head into the next hallway they passed and was greeted by the sight of a dripping maze of metal pipes.

“This is it,” he said and they started down the hall at a run, giving up any reasonable pretense of prisoner and guard inexplicably wandering the engine rooms together. However, as they were about to reach the next hall, Finn heard the definite click of boots coming down the hallway towards them and without thinking, yanked Poe into the first side door he could find.

A trooper rounded into the hallway shortly afterwards, accompanied by a pair of engineer specialists. Finn pressed himself against the wall of the side room until they had passed.

“Finn,” Poe said quietly.

“They must have come from the central engines,” Finn whispered, “you can see the compensator solvent on their boots.”

“Finn,” Poe said more insistently.

“We just have to follow the tracks now and hope there aren’t too many of them in there,” Finn said, “I can distract the engineers, but you have to remember to switch the ventral conduit fuel lines and, you cannot forget to turn off the thermal sensors on the B tanks.”

“Finn, look at this!” Poe hissed. Finn turned around.

The entire room was filled with massive tanks of highly compressed biofuel.

“They’ve gotten lazy. They aren’t just storing the algae raw, they’re trying to pack it in,” Poe whispered in awe. “Which means we could…”

“Blow this thing out of the water,” Finn breathed.

Both of them stared up at the massive tanks. Finn allowed himself to picture it for a moment. The First Order could lose not just supplies but an entire tanker ship along with all of its support vehicles and infrastructure. It would be a blow unlike anything the Resistance had been able to mount for months, since Crait, since the Supremacy.

“We could free this whole moon in a second,” Finn finally said, “but the Pheilyns here… well they’d have to find something else to eat.”

Poe’s gaze lingered for a second longer on the tanks.

“This isn’t what we do anymore,” he finally said, voice a little rough, “we can do more than just blow up ships.”

“Hope the Pheilyn broods find this room,” Finn said, “I mean I’m assuming to them it looks delicious.”

They ran back into the hallway and followed the trail of footprints.

At the door to the entry room they paused again while Poe took a careful glance inside.

“Five guards I can see, and a few working over on the coolant,” he whispered. “Got anything good for a distraction?”

“I’ll play it just like Ankus again,” Finn murmured back and then strode confidently into the room with his blaster raised. “Alright, drop your weapons rebel scum! There’s an entire squad coming behind me. You’re trapped here.”

The troopers on guard immediately raised their blasters right back at him.

“Who the hell are you?” one of them asked.

“Helmets off. We’ve already picked up your chatter and found your ship. We know one of you is the traitor, FN-2187,” Finn announced confidently, taking aim at the trooper who had spoken.

“This is a mistake,” another of the troopers said, stepping forward, “we’ve been on guard here for half a shift already and no one’s come down or sent any message about rebels on the ship.”

“I’ve been in pursuit of FN-2187, there’s nowhere else he could have gone,” Finn said, “Now get those helmets off!”

As he raised his voice, a few of the troopers did start pulling off their helmets in exasperation. He spent a few seconds inspecting the face of a young freckly man with a few whispy curls of blonde hair and a tall darker skinned woman who rolled her eyes at him as he pointed the blaster at her.

“Well if none of you are the traitor, then why did you let him slip in here?” Finn demanded after he had finished his inspection.

“We’ve been watching the door. No one’s come in besides you and a few mechanics who just left,” the woman said.

“And did you check the mechanics? Did you read the IDs?” Finn demanded.

The freckled trooper blanched a little.

“You didn’t even check the ID? You just saw a white uniform and let them walk in and out?” Finn yelled before any of them had a chance to respond. “Do you even understand who you just let slip out of here?”

“Well your squad will intercept in the hallway,” another trooper suggested. “You said they were right behind.”  
Finn shook his blaster menacingly in the man’s direction.

“You idiot! FN-2187 is extremely dangerous, he’s not just going for a stroll down here, use your brains!” Finn snarled. “What do you have right next door?”

“The… the biofuel tanks,” the woman said, her voice suddenly cracking with horror.

“Go! All of you we have to go! Search the tanks, search the whole room before something detonates in there!” Finn yelled, and suddenly troopers and mechanics were flooding out into the hall towards the fuel tank storage.

Poe’s head popped up from behind a massive pipe.

“Time to go?” Finn asked.

“Better move fast,” Poe said with a nod, “and nice work, bud. FN-2187 is extremely dangerous.”

They sprinted out and down the hall, leaving a room full of panicked troopers to scour the fuel tanks for explosives. The stairs were even worse on the way up, and by the time they’d pounded their way back to the water level floor, they were both winded and wheezing.

“Back… to the skier?” Poe gasped. Just then, the ship lurched. A low humming grumble began to fill the halls.

“Sounds like our friends are getting started,” Finn wheezed, “and we’d better get going.”

They skidded out into the dripping hanger again and opened the door. As soon as the hatch opened, hundreds of Phielyns swarmed in and around them, their slippery grey bodies prying at off locks and tearing out wires. Finn and Poe lept back onto the skier and took off, glancing back to the see the entire tanker nearly covered with glossy grey bodies.

On the platform, Finn could hear a few of the troopers yelling.

“Why aren’t they firing? Or taking off? Just run the engines and shake them off again!” the officer was screaming as stormtroopers leapt back onto the hover barges.

“Sir, I’m not getting any signal from command,” one trooper yelled and then paused, “...and I don’t hear anything from the engines.”

That much became clear in a second. There was complete silence from the ship. No thrusters. No starter. No ignition drive for any systems that hadn’t been active when the Pheilyns started their assault. The First Order tanker might be intact and its personal might be alive, but it would not be moving anywhere until someone brought down a new launch conduit line and they’d flushed the entire system and replaced the shorted wiring.

“So it’s just up to the Pheilyns now?” Finn asked as they clambered back onto the rocks towards their ship.

“We’ve given them a shot. But they’re the ones who have to decide what to do with the First Order on their moon,” Poe said, “even if that means they just steal back their algae and let them go as soon as they can work out all the things I just broke.”

“Please tell me tracking is one of the things you just broke,” Finn said, “or are we leaving underneath some other ship?”

“The only tracking they’re going to be doing is with a squint into the sun,” Poe said, opening the hatch of the hauler. BB-8 gave a happy chirp as Poe reached down to pat the droid on the head. Finn followed and was greeted by a much less excited sigh.

“You can’t tell me not to get the floors wet when he’s just dripped all over them,” Finn said with some indignance.

Then finally he reached up and yanked off the helmet. Salty air. The smell of sweat and old metal. Poe looking him in the eye again rather than just staring vaguely at his face. He sank into his chair with a huge sigh of relief and tossed the helmet unceremoniously over his shoulder.

Poe pulled them out over the water and gave them a bit of distance before blasting up just to be safe.

“Better than just shooting down droids this time?” he asked.

“Definitely,” Finn replied, “we made the right call didn’t we?”

“We saved the people, not just hurt the First Order,” Poe answered, “that’s the only way we can hope to win.”

“By saving what we love?” Finn asked, feeling the familiar lump rise again in his throat.

“Uh, sure. Sounds like a great poster,” Poe laughed, giving him a strange look, “I just mean that the only we can win is if we can convince a hell of a lot more than just Pheilyns to rise up with us and put their lives on the line.”

With that they jumped back to the sky over Selvaris. As the hauler descended slowly back down into the jungle, Finn felt his worries rising back over him like the moist heat of the jungle in the morning. He still hadn’t heard from Rose. All they ever heard from General Organa anymore was so coded and brief there was hardly anything to learn.

But as the hauler descended down towards the plantation he spotted something on the ground that made his heart start to pound. Not with fear this time. It was the familiar metal disk of the Millennium Falcon parked in the jungle below.

Rey was back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have gotten way too caught up in imagining this space heist with axolotl aliens. Also just like... my boys doing some banter. Comments clear my skin and save my crops.


	3. Molten

As soon as the door to the Millennium Falcon opened, Rey could smell the green. She closed her eyes, letting herself feel the planet before she saw it. She could smell the sun on the leaves, the rotting fruits breaking down into damp soil, tiny insects burrowing into bark, and as she breathed in she felt all of it reaching back to her.

Hot sunlight streamed down as she stepped out, and for just one second her mind brought her back to Jakku and the feeling of her skin peeling after a long day outside. Just a second, but she felt that tiny nugget of dark pain inside her blossom once again. Her jaw clenched as she knew what was coming.

He stood behind her, framed with painful irony by the door of the Falcon. She’d seen him in flashes for the past few months, but she no longer tried to speak or to reason with him. It was over. He was lost. Yet he lingered on in her mind like a monster in an old tale. In a second, he noticed her and their eyes met briefly. His hand clenched into a fist and she noticed that his palm was burned a deep, raw red. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, he was gone.

“Rey!” someone called and she looked up to see Resistance pilots streaming out of the old plantation base towards her. She couldn’t help but grin. While her reputation in the Resistance sometimes unnerved her, there was no better feeling than being welcomed home. She seized her bag from the bay of the Falcon and dashed out to meet them.

As soon as she reached the base, however, another ship came roaring down into the makeshift hanger beside the Falcon.

“Perfect timing,” said the freshly appointed Captain Millham, waving from her post at lookout. C’ai Threnalli found her and folded her into his arms. Rey gave the Abednedo a hard squeeze and then turned to look at the landing ship.

As soon as it touched the ground, the door flung open and Finn burst out. He was wearing what appeared to be old stormtrooper armor covered in sea salt, but was otherwise unchanged. She felt something fierce and warm and strong bursting in her chest as she took off towards him. Finn was the one who had come back for her, and she for him, and nothing in the galaxy was going to keep them from finding each other again and again.

He staggered back a little from the weight of her crushing hug.

“What have you been doing out there?” he yelped, “ripping up trees with your bare hands? You know it’s the Force that’s supposed to lift the rocks, right?”

“Well, I’ve mostly been reading,” she admitted, “but maybe you’ve just gotten weaker.”

“Rey, how are you? How was the mission?” Poe called out to her, jogging out from the ship with BB-8 in tow.

“I-” she paused. “It was good.”

Finn and Poe stared at her with anticipation.

“Yeah, great, but I mean how was uncovering the ancient ways of the Jedi? Where did you have to go? I mean, what kind of training was there?” Poe asked.

“I visited some temples, yes,” Rey said with a shrug, looking down to brush some imaginary dirt off of her arm, “I mean, it’s kind of hard to explain, you know, Force stuff.”

“Right,” Finn agreed.

“But I did make in to General Organa’s base to check in,” Rey said and breathed a tiny sigh of relief when she saw that she had successfully diverted their interests. “They’re doing well over there on… well, I guess it’s technically classified, but the General was well. Recruitment has actually exceeded their hopes, it’s just the training that keeps them from sending more pilots. And that mechanic, Rose, she figured out a way to keep the First Order from tracking the Falcon in hyperspace. It’s not ready for all our ships yet, and it’s not totally foolproof since it actually requires six small jumps without them latching on again, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Rose was up?” Finn asked cautiously.

“She was… I mean she was working like crazy. She’s training a whole new engineering corps,” Rey said, trying not to let her smile falter, “but, um, not exactly fully up and about yet.”

There was a slightly uncomfortable silence at that.

“Well, we should get you back inside and briefed,” Poe said, clapping her on the shoulder, “and of course, there has to be some sort of party.”

“For what?” Rey asked.

“For the return of our only Jedi,” Poe laughed, shaking his head at her apparent confusion. “Come on, I’ve invented a new recipe for punch and Finn has been saving all sorts of broken junk for you to tinker with!”

Rey followed him back up towards the base, slinging the bag filled with her ancient books back over her shoulder. The strap was cutting into her arm and what she wanted more than anything in the world was to spend a few hours trying fruit punch and fixing things.

By the evening she was full to bursting and so tired she had to excuse herself early to lie down inside on her bunk. She could still hear laughter and smell the faint smoke from the bonfire trickling in through the gaps in the rock. Sprawled across the bed, she felt peaceful for the first time in months.

But tomorrow, a nasty voice from her own mind reminded her, tomorrow she’d have to be a Jedi again. To be wise and powerful and know what to do. She’d have to explain to Poe that she’d spent the last few weeks beating her head against books that made no sense to her, wandering into ruins that showed her nothing but old stones, and researching ancient techniques for meditation that could in no way help her take down an army of First Order destroyers. For one awful second she felt tears burning at the corners of her eyes. If she had just had more time with Luke. If there was someone else, someone who could teach her what to do. But this time, she was truly, totally on her own. She was the last hope for a movement and she could barely figure out how to read some of her sacred books.

The fear opened inside her like ice spreading over the surface of a puddle. She would fail and she would lose everything, lose friends, lose the closest she’d come to a family. And the disappointment. She could just imagine the look on General Organa’s face when she was struck down, defeated, ground back into the dust where she belonged. Nothing. No one.

She opened her eyes and he was there again. He was like a live wire now, not angry exactly, but filled with a vicious defensiveness. Tension in his shoulders. Wound up tight and ready to strike or snap at someone. He looked up and his face changed to a bitter smile.

“You’re afraid again,” he stated, voice low and faintly sardonic. “Afraid when you know you don’t have to be. Eating yourself alive.”

He tugged off his glove and she saw again the raw, burnt skin on his palm. He wasn’t treating it right and it was starting to scab. He offered her his hand in a sickening parody of his final gesture to her when they’d last met.

“You’ll grow tired of it eventually,” he assured her, “and you’ll rip it apart. I know you.”

She flung a box of screws she’d been using to repair a broken air filter at his head and he vanished into the shadows.

“Rey?” a cautious voice said from behind her and she whirled around. Finn was standing in the doorway, holding two mugs of punch.

“It’s nothing,” she said, leaping to her feet, “just frustrated!”

Finn’s brow creased a little as he looked her up and down.

“Look, I know you’re trying to be heroic and chipper and all that, believe me, we’ve all been pasting on that smile for months,” Finn said slowly, coming to sit down next to her on the cot, “but you don’t have to do that with me. I get it, okay?”

“What if-” Rey said, taking a deep breath, “what if I can’t save everyone? I’m not trained, I can barely read these books, and Finn… I didn’t really learn anything visiting old Jedi temples and libraries. I’m no good at this, I need help!”

She clenched her teeth, unable to look him in the eye. Gently, he pressed one of the mugs of punch into her hands.

“I can’t tell you that I’m not worried,” Finn said finally, “or that I’m not sure if we can stop the First Order. But that’s not on you, Rey, it’s really not. No one expects you to just drop their ships out of the sky and slice Kylo Ren in half with a lightsaber. If there’s anyone to blame, it’s probably me for getting half of the Resistance transits blown out of the sky before they even reached Crait.”

Rey choked a little on her punch.

“Sorry,” she gasped, “this batch is very sour. I’m not laughing at you, I promise.”

But by then he was laughing too and then after a sip, coughing and rubbing at his mouth.

“Let’s stop tearing ourselves up,” Finn finally said as they finished giggling and spluttering. “I need to find something I can do to help. And there has to be at least something in all those books that you’re good at.”

“Actually…” Rey said, finally remembering what she had to show him. “There was one book that just… clicked for me. It isn’t finished yet, but General Organa said she’d help me get the last piece I needed.”

With that she bent down to her bag and drew out her almost completed lightsaber. She had elongated the handle so that it moved more like her staff, but otherwise she had stayed close to the designs she’d found in the books.

Finn’s eyes widened as he saw it and she couldn’t help but smirk a little. Whether it was the Force or just latent talent, at least she could build a saber from a few specs and a bunch of repurposed parts.

“So does it turn on?” Finn asked, gazing reverently at the saber.

“Not yet,” Rey sighed, “I have everything ready but the kyber crystal. I haven’t found anything but fragments of those and I need one that’s at least mostly intact to keep it working for more than a few seconds.”

“How do you even find a kyber crystal these days?” Finn asked, “also please, I’m begging you, let me hold it.”

Rey tossed it to him and he clutched it gleefully into his arms.

“General Organa said she had a friend, so I guess we just wait for her friend. Run a few missions together, maybe. I could even try fixing up a few ships if BB-8 will let me,” Rey said, “I mean, like you said, anything I can do to keep busy.”

Finn handled the saber for another moment and then finally handed it back to her. His face was serious again, but he put his hand gently over hers before he spoke.

“Listen, I know there’s something else wrong. Something that you aren’t telling me, and I can’t make you tell me. You aren’t just throwing screws into the wall because you’re frustrated with Jedi scholarship, Rey, and I just want you to feel like, well, you can trust me. You can trust that if you say anything, you’re just saying it to me,” Finn said a little haltingly. His liquidy dark eyes were narrowed in concern and seemed to bore right into hers.

Her breath caught a little in her throat. She hadn’t realized how badly she’d wanted to tell him, to tell Finn at least even if she couldn’t explain it yet. Just the feeling of keeping it a secret made her feel dirty, as though she really was tempted by the darkness.

“Something happened to me,” Rey finally said, “keeps happening to me. I thought it would stop, but I can’t… it won’t. And I don’t want it, I swear, I’m trying to ignore it, and the second I think it puts any of you in danger, I’ll leave.”

“Rey, I trust you too,” Finn said, “I know whatever it is, even if it’s something you think I can’t understand, I’m going to keep trusting you.”

Rey glanced nervously back towards the corner, hoping that her nerves wouldn’t send any intended ripples out into the Force.

“The Force is connecting me… to Kylo Ren,” she said, feeling herself recoil from the words even as she said them, “it started back on Ahch-To and I thought I could use it at first… to turn him, to try to help. But when I went to the Supremacy, Snoke said he’d created the connection to manipulate us. And I couldn’t…. Kylo Ren was beyond redemption. I thought the visions would stop then, that with Snoke dead I wouldn’t keep seeing him, but they haven’t stopped. I’ve tried and I can’t make them stop.”

She spit out the story as quickly as she could. It sounded feeble even to her. Without the confusion, her anger towards Luke, her need to understand, her wild and unpredictable plunge into the Force, it made no sense why she would treat her bond to Kylo Ren as anything but a threat.

Finn’s face was unreadable as he listened. Then he began to nod.

“I can’t say I understand the whole idea of the Force just… connecting your minds. But having any part of your brain tethered to Kylo Ren… well, I am so sorry,” and with that he wrapped her into a hug.

“So you aren’t angry with me?” Rey said cautiously, pulling back a little. Finn’s eyebrows shot up. Then slowly a smile began to spread across his face.

“Why would I be? Why would any of us be angry with you when you’ve just handed us the best weapon we’ve had against the First Order since Luke Skywalker!” Finn said, voicing beginning to rise with excitement. He stood up and paced for a second. “If you’re able to see him, you can get us intel no spy droid could ever dream of. You could get in his head, even, misdirect him if you have to. I mean… of course, you don’t have to do any of this. It’s your Force… thing, and I’d never ask you to do this if you didn’t want to.”

“So you’re saying I should just… make the best of a bad situation?” Rey blinked.

“That’s pretty much the Resistance motto these days,” Finn quipped, “we’re a mess with only a few ships on our base and you’re a Jedi with a lightsaber that won’t light. Bad situations are all we’ve got.”

Before Rey had a chance to respond, she was interrupted by the sound of shouting outside and then shortly after, the distant roar of a ship hurtling down towards them at a recklessly fast pace.

“That doesn’t sound great,” Finn said, springing to his feet.

Rey grabbed her staff from under the bed and then dashed after him.

Outside, she could make out the outline of a sleek expensive ship descending down towards the base rapidly. The Resistance pilots were scattering towards ships and their two mounted gun turrets while Poe shouted orders to put out the fire and get everyone to cover.

“Who could even find us out here?” Rey yelled. “That isn’t First Order!”

“Maybe they’re looking for fruit?” Finn suggested, squinting against the rush of wind from the ship as it landed.

The ship finally powered down and they were all left in the darkness, staring at the door for any sign of movement. No one got out for a few long minutes.

“I can pull it open,” Rey finally said, taking a few steps forward towards the ship. But as soon as she had started, the door exploded outward, taking with it a fair chunk of the hull. Immediately every blaster left in the resistance was trained on the doorway.

A single man slumped out through the door, hacking and gasping from the smoke of his explosion. He was older, but oddly dapper for his age despite the singe marks on his black and gold cape. His face, mustached and well proportioned, was drawn into an expression of pure terror and he lurched out of the cabin on shaky legs.

“I’ve got something for you,” he said, eyes fixing on her. He held up a small bag and then tossed it towards her. “Now run! You all need to run!”

Rey heard a click as several of the blasters aimed and prepared to fire.

“Hold it,” Poe’s voice suddenly called from behind her, “no one fire!”

Rey turned back to look and saw Poe jogging out towards them and spreading his arms.

“What’s happening?” she hissed, “and is this an attack or not?”

“This,” Poe said, gesturing to the man from the ship, “is former General Lando Calrissian of the Rebel Alliance. And if he says we need to run, well, we probably need to run.”

***

“Just try to explain,” Poe encouraged the panicked and still smoldering Lando Calrissian, now securely inside of the base and attempting to take a few shaky sips of water. “But slower this time and with less screaming.”

The rest of the Resistance fighters at Selvaris base were gathered around Lando and Poe in the main control room. The screens and scanners were silent, and despite their techs combing through the frequencies, none of them had been able to pick up on anything that might call for an evacuation of the base. Rey glanced a little doubtfully down at Lando, fiddling with the kyber crystal he had found for her.

“I told you, Leia sent me out to the Unknown Regions. I’ve got a contact who has some of the First Order charts, navigational data they picked up out there, and I went to Ilum to find a kyber crystal,” Lando said irritably.

“And you were made? Your seller was dead?” Poe said, trying to piece together the story, “but not by the First Order.”

“I’m telling you, there’s something else out there. Creatures like I’ve never… that no one in this galaxy has ever seen before. And they’re coming, they’re coming for all of us, so we need to run!” Lando insisted, slamming the water cup down onto the table where he sat. “I’ve seen their ships!”

“But where would we even run to?” Finn asked, seeming a little doubtful about the man’s credentials as opposed to the more receptive Poe. “Why do we need to run from these, uh, creature things you saw out in the Unknown Regions?”

“Are you trying to say that the First Order made some sort of alliance with a species from the Unknown Regions?” Poe said suddenly, face suddenly tightening, “is this the last step of their invasion? A secret second army?”

“You aren’t listening!” Lando yelled. This time he stood up and the room fell silent. “The First Order aren’t our problem anymore. There is no Resistance or First Order or New Republic or any of it. The only thing you need to worry about is the survival of every living species in this galaxy versus those creatures from outside of it!”

No one said anything for a few moments after this. Rey cast her eyes around the room and she could see faces falling, some embarrassed on Lando’s behalf. Finally, Poe broke the silence.

“Listen, sir, thank you from bringing this information to us. I promise you I’m going to treat this seriously, but… well, is it possible that perhaps we don’t have enough information yet to really understand what you saw? I mean, it’s just… doubtful that a civilization from the Unknown Regions would be able to do much against the First Order,” Poe said slowly, “I just… we have to be careful that we don’t fall into another trap. This could all have been engineered to get us to run or to betray the locations of our bases. The First Order knows the Unknown Regions well, they spent years out there, I just… we have to be sure this wasn’t all them from the beginning.”

Lando looked hard at Poe for a long moment.

“You’re a fool,” he finally said, “all of you. I fought for the Rebellion, overthrew an empire once, and do you know what I realized? It took maybe twenty years for it all to collapse again. That’s what you’re here fighting and dying for when you could be saving yourselves, getting somewhere safe, taking care of the people you love.”

And with that he left, sweeping out of the room and back towards his ship.

“He won’t be leaving until he gets that door replaced at least,” Poe sighed, “now can anybody tell me if there’s a way we can substantiate that story?”

“Commander, we aren’t picking anything up,” Ozesha said, “but we can’t scan as far as the Unknown Regions. There’s been nothing about this from any of the First Order communications we’ve intercepted, but if this truly was a strategic maneuver as you said we wouldn’t be able to read encoded transmissions with this equipment.”

“So all you can really tell me now is that there is no invasion of the galaxy happening currently,” Poe said, running a hand through his hair. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment in concentration. Finally he seemed to realize people were waiting for an order. “Help Gene- help Mr. Calrissian fix his ship, but don’t let him leave yet. I’ll see if General Organa knows anything that can help or if we can gather any more information on this.”

With that, the other Resistance fighters began to shuffle out of the room until only Finn and Rey remained. Poe groaned and dragged his hands down his face.

“Can one of you please have an idea for what we should do about this?” he pleaded. “Because this is almost definitely a trap. It feels like a trap. And I am not going to let myself fall for another First Order trap and get all of my people killed.”

“I mean,” Finn began and cast Rey a significant glance, “I don’t know if there’s any way to verify all of it short of sailing off into the Unknown Regions ourselves, but Rey might be able to do something. You know, with the Force? Like we had talked about?”

Rey shot him a glare as he continued to raise his eyebrows at her.

“I can’t just use the Force to scan for traps,” she snapped, “it doesn’t work like that.”

“I’m not saying that, I mean, you know?” Finn bobbed his head a little in an attempt to communicate subtly. “Come on Rey, I’m talking about trying to poke around the Supreme Leader’s mind a little. I mean, it can’t hurt to try.”

“Is that something you can do?” Poe asked, looking a little mystified by the conversation.

“I definitely cannot. I cannot read anyone’s mind,” Rey said, driving her heel into Finn’s toes surreptitiously. “But I could at least try to… well, I could try to reach out and feel something. Just generally, you know, feeling the Force.”

“Anything you can give us right now would be better than what we’ve got,” Poe said, his eyes shining a little as he looked up at her. It was a little strange and flustering that the top pilot in the Resistance found her impressive, but in their short acquaintance Poe had always treated her with reverence. “I’ll send a message to the General and Admiral Vulwuakk to see if they’ve heard anything.”

“Good, I’ll just need some, um, privacy,” Rey called after him, “to concentrate.”

As soon as Poe was out of earshot, Rey whirled on Finn.

“Oh wonderful job. Very trustworthy. Very ‘you’re just telling me, no one else,’ Finn,” she snarled at him.

“I was trying not to be explicit,” Finn said, looking offended, “but Rey if we’ve ever needed you to use your connection, it’s now.”

Rey glared at him a moment longer, then finally turned and started stalking back to the barracks.

“Fine,” she said, “but you have to make sure no one walks in on me.”

When she reached her bunk, she first reached down and dug the lightsaber out of her bag. Fingers shaking a little, she popped open the panel and slid the kyber crystal into the nest of wiring. Gently, she nudged it into position, trying to feel the craft to insure everything was aligned correctly. With this it would be complete, it would be hers.

As she popped the panel back into place, she heard Finn dragging the door shut.

“Are you just going to stand over there and watch me?” she said, nose wrinkling at the thought of Finn overhearing her one sided conversation.

“I’m just guarding the door,” he said with an innocent shrug. “I can plug my ears if you’d like.”

“Do that then,” she shot back at him and then flung herself down onto the cot. For a few seconds she stared up at ceiling. A vine had made its way inside and was curling around the old stones. She watched a bug crawl into a tiny crevice between the bricks.

Then with hesitation, like turning a rusty tap, she looked inward and tried to open the burning resentment now flashing inside of her. Angry at Finn for asking. Angry at herself for having no better way to help. Angry at Kylo Ren for sticking around in her head.

She opened it until it turned from a drip into a flood, until her limbs were shaking with frustrated anger. It didn’t take long this way to find him. He was almost always angry.

“Back so soon,” his low voice said from across the room. Rey lurched back up into a sitting position with a gasp.

Kylo Ren was leaning against the cot across from hers. He was so tall, immaculate now in dark robes with his black hair no longer hanging over his face. No instability, no weakness, no doubt even. He’d fed all of it to the fire of his anger. No more tremor in his lips or shine of agony in his eyes.

Although she couldn't see where he was, there was a red glow bathing the front of him in harsh contrast.

“Where are you?” she finally asked, unsure how else to begin without making him suspicious.

One of his eyebrows raised just a fraction.

“So we’re speaking again?” he asked with faint amusement.

“Yes,” Rey said without explanation, “I’m asking you where you are.”

“Perhaps you’ve heard of Mustafar,” he said, stepping a few paces closer to her. He towered over her and she stood up to at least try to look him in the eye. “Although perhaps not out on Jakku.”

“I know your grandfather built his castle there,” Rey said, ignoring the barb. “Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side there.”

“Fitting, don’t you think?” Kylo Ren said with a faint smile, “Darth Vader shrugged off the Skywalker name right here in the fire. And the same will happen to Ben Solo.”

“You’re gathering your generals,” Rey said, starting to understand, “to pledge their loyalty to you. To recognize you as Supreme Leader and to remake the First Order as your personal army of destruction.”

“I will put an end to their doubts. To clinging to the past and reviving an empire that tore itself apart,” he said, “you could have been a part of it. We could have remade the galaxy together. Ended all of this squabbling and corruption and rot. I know you want to. You’ve suffered because of it.”

“You’re insane,” Rey finally spat, “you’re going to destroy the entire galaxy. I know what Snoke found out in the Unknown Regions. The creatures you’re going to use.”

Kylo Ren’s face was blank at this and Rey suddenly surged her full strength into reaching into his mind while he was off guard.

She couldn’t stop herself from screaming. Pain like nothing she had felt before, most of it self-inflicted, like picking open a wound again and again. For a moment she couldn’t even see past it. He wasn’t as stable as he was trying to be. Inside, that jarring off-kilter ferocity remained. And confusion. No trace of a smugness or confidence.

Then she felt herself ripped out and she staggered backwards, her knees buckling as she ran into the cot and then she collapsed back against the wall. When she opened her eyes again, a few lights dancing in front of them as her mind refocused, he was gone.

“Rey!” someone was yelling, and when she finally managed to regain control over her head she saw that Finn was kneeling in front of her and clutching her hands.

“I’m back,” she panted, “it’s okay, I’m back.”

“I never should have asked, I’m so sorry, Rey, I’m so sorry,” Finn choked, his words rushed and frantic, “are you alright? Did he…?”

“I’m alright, just disoriented,” she said, pushing herself back into a sitting position. “I tried to go into his mind and he… wasn’t happy.”

“You were screaming,” Finn said, his voice shaking a little.

“It wasn’t my pain,” Rey said grimly, “don’t worry. I think I got something. I tried mentioning creatures from the Unknown Regions and I don’t think, unless he’s a lot better at hiding it, that he knew what I was talking about.”

Finn sighed and leaned back onto his elbows.

“So it might not be a trap,” Finn said.

“And I did it,” Rey said, looking down at herself with new wonder, “I actually did that with the Force, just trying it out for the first time.”

“And never, ever, again,” Finn assured her, his face serious. “Come on, we should tell Poe.”

Before she left the room, Rey gave the bag of books on the ground a defiant little kick. Then with her newly finished lightsaber hanging at her belt, she followed Finn out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot finally begins to grind into action. Tune in next time for Rose and Leia drop kicking Hux into oblivion. If you comment my mom will cook you dinner.


	4. Ignition

The constant rains of Donovia pelted down onto the metal roofs of the shanty town, collecting in puddles so black with grime and soot they looked like oil. Smoke and water mingled in the air outside of the factories, and as Rose Tico squinted up past the rim of her wide hood she could barely make out the blinking lights of the signal towers through the gloom.

Beside her, wrapped in as many water repellent blankets as they could find loomed the tall frame of the wookie Chewbacca, and beside him, still somehow elegant even beneath the massive hoods common on this planet, was General Leia Organa.

“The union said to meet them at the market,” Leia said, peering around the doorway of the scrap metal trading post where they’d been sheltering. A squad of stormtroopers were across the street, although they were mostly occupied by a game of dice. They had gotten in quietly, and most of the First Order activity here was concentrated on keeping the factory workers from rioting rather than searching out Resistance spies.

“Isn’t this all a market?” Rose whispered back. The confused jumble of makeshift houses extended for miles and she didn’t like the idea of straying too far from their ship.

“Not enough petty theft to be a market,” Leia replied and Rose could hear a faint smile in her voice. “I’ve missed the field work, you know, the senate was putting me to sleep.”

Chewbacca gave a faint growl and gestured towards one of the larger gaps between houses.

“I agree, we should move,” Leia said, and then keeping her head down to the pavement, she walked out onto the street, feet sloshing through the grimy water. Rose took a deep breath and followed.

Her steps were still not even. As she followed Leia, she concentrated all her effort on rolling her feet properly, on making sure her knee didn’t twist, but still every few steps she would feel some muscle twinge uncomfortably in her leg. The water on the road made her feel slippery, and she had to resist the urge to shuffle as slowly as possible to find her footing.

Leia and Chewbacca vanished up ahead around a corner and Rose broke into a reluctant limp to catch up. As she turned down the narrow alley they had vanished down, she was suddenly greeted by the sight of what was clearly a marketplace. The street was crowded with massive hoods like hers and people scurried back and forth between metal awnings that kept the rain off enough for the mech sellers to show their wares and for the old women with carts of pickled roots suspended in jars to keep dry.

For a second, Rose was lost in the crowd. Everyone was hooded and wrapped up so heavily it was impossible to tell one person from another. Then finally she spotted the tall head of Chewbacca weaving through the crowd only a few steps ahead of her and her stomach unclenched.

She shoved her way through a cluster of men smoking something musty smelling and caught up with her companions just as a soot smeared man who’d clearly come straight from a factory shift took Leia by the shoulder and guided her into a doorway made from a refurbished ore stripper. Rose followed and allowed herself only a second to think of Paige and their parents coming home from the mines every evening smelling of that same grime.

Once they were inside the man led them down a hallway and then through a door hidden by a loose panel on the wall. Inside, lit only by the orange glow of a few mineral lamps, was a low room filled with mostly human men and women packed into every corner.

“Thank you all for coming,” Leia began, “I know this was dangerous for you and I know times have been hard here. The First Order claims to bring security and stability, but we know that they prefer power over the good of their people.”

“They’ve been assigning longer shifts. They told us we’d have jobs building their fleet until we died, that we’d have credits to spare, but they’ve kept people working in those factories until their hands bled and they begged for sleep,” one woman at the front said, standing up to speak. Her grey hair was shaved down to the scalp and she had a few faded tattoos crossing her face. “How can you help us?”

“I can’t promise help,” Leia said and a murmur of dissatisfaction spread across the room. “I know that each of our problems seem great, that we need to take care of ourselves, but if we never join together to stop the root of the problem, those individual troubles will only grow.”

“Listen, we’re no lovers of the First Order, and we’ll offer you safety on Donovia as best as we can grant it, but we can’t go jump into an X-Wing for you. We’ve got families,” a younger man called out from the back.

“I understand. And yet I’m still asking you to. I’m asking you to leave your families and your jobs and sometimes even your lives. And I have no right to ask. I have no right to your lives. But I have to ask,” Leia said, her voice thick suddenly with emotion, “because if I don’t ask, if no one stands up, then we will lose and the First Order with have nothing standing between it and total control of the galaxy. I will be grateful to accept your support and your protection on Donovia, but what I need is pilots, engineers, logistics. I need people willing to do more than support my cause. I need you to fight. To stand as Luke Skywalker did and put everything on the line.”

The room was silent at this. Leia kept her eyes fixed on them for a long time until the tension caused them to drop their faces to the floor.

“I’d like you to listen to the story of my friend, Rose, one of our best engineers,” Leia said breaking the silence, “and I’d like you to think about how long you can wait before one way or another, you’ll be fighting for your lives.”

Rose stepped up into the center of the room. Leia was far better at persuading than she was, but the general had told her again and again that all she had to do was tell her story just as she would to a friend.

“Hello,” Rose said, smiling at the crowd and trying to banish her shyness, “I’m Rose. I’m a mechanic for the Resistance. I was born on Hays Minor in the Otomok system and when I was a child, the First Order came to take control of our planet. At first it wasn’t bad. I still had my parents, my older sister, Paige. We struggled, but we were happy. But things started to change. The First Order started to take children to train as stormtroopers, but my parents told me not to worry, that I was too old. The First Order would test their weapons in our cities, leaving thousands homeless. But it didn’t happen to us. I thought maybe it never would. I was still happy.”

She paused for a moment, catching her breath and looking around the room.

“Our parents were miners for the First Order,” she began again, “but as I grew up, my sister and I started to work alongside them and that’s when I began to notice. The cruelty. The way they treated us like garbage. I would get angry and my parents would tell me to stay quiet, to keep my voice down, but I didn’t want to keep my voice down, I wanted to scream. My older sister kept me safe. We played stupid pranks on the Stormtroopers and felt invincible. But eventually… we messed up. Our parent spent everything they had to smuggle us offworld and then we were on our own. So we joined the Resistance together and my sister… my sister Paige gave her life bringing down a Dreadnaught over D’Qar.”

“She didn’t have to die,” the old woman at the front said. “You could have run.”

“My sister would never have run,” Rose said, her voice cracking a little, “she was a hero. She would have made the same choice even if she knew. And so would I. I lost everything I had in the world. But I’m still fighting. I’m fighting for you, for all of you to be free. I may have lost the things I loved most, but I have to keep going to make sure that it won’t happen to anyone else. I hope you decide to join me.”

With that, she stepped backwards. Leia wrapped an arm around her back and rubbed her shoulder for a minute.

Slowly, a few of the union workers stood up. The young man from the back who’d spoken before was first.

“Jacmar Dall,” he said, “I’m a signal man. I’d like to join.”

“Tell it to the wookie,” Leia said with a smile, “he’ll give you a place to report to by next week for training.”

More and more of the workers were standing to join, although Rose noticed a few slipping out the door without more trouble. Twenty new Resistance fighters. Most of them unskilled factory workers, but a few of them had at least driven a ship before.

The old woman with the short hair was the last in line, but before she could say anything to Rose, the man in the dirty raincoat who’d showed them in burst through the door, water spilling off of him and onto the floor in his haste.

“First Order destroyer jumped into orbit, shuttles just landed in the city,” he gasped.

“They’re here for us,” Leia said grimly, “someone must have seen us out there.”

“I swear we-” the man began.

“There’s bounty hunters all over this galaxy who know my face,” Leia assured him, “but we need to get out of here quietly.”

“Through the back,” the old woman said, “follow me.”

Chewbacca growled low in his throat as he carefully stowed the datachron with the information he’d taken from the union workers. The three of them followed the old woman back out into the narrow hallway and then out a door into a street so small, Chewbacca’s shoulders scraped at the sides of it.

“Take this as far as you can up the hill,” the old woman warned them, “don’t go down the covered streets, the troopers hate the rain.”

“Thank you,” Leia said, gripping her hand for a moment, before turning and hurrying up the hill.

Rose followed but already she felt her knee hurting again. The cold rainy weather made the newly healed scars ache and her steps still felt uneven. Chewbacca seemed to notice her falling behind and took her hand for balance. Leia came to the end of the narrow street and ducked her head out before swearing.

The main roads were filled with Stormtroopers peering under hoods and checking IDs. And walking right towards them beneath a massive canopy to keep the rain off was a heavily guarded First Order general. He was sallow, red haired, and young.

“General Hux,” Leia sneered with distaste, “what’s he doing down here getting his boots wet?”

He answered the question by speaking into an amplifier.

“I would like to speak now to Leia Organa of the Resistance. I know you’re here. You’ve got nowhere to run. If you turn yourself in now I will leave this planet unharmed, if not…” Hux said, pulling out a blaster and firing nonchalantly into the crowd, “I will kill everyone in this city one by one.”

Someone was screaming and Rose could make out the slumped form of a dead man being dragged away by the stormtroopers. Rose seized the general’s arm as she nearly lunged out onto the street to personally strangle Hux.

“No luck? Out of earshot perhaps?” Hux said, still holding the blaster in his hand. “Anyone else here want to spare these people some pain and offer up the Resistance general?”

He raised the blaster again.

“Wait please!” a woman’s voice screamed, and Rose recognized the old woman from the meeting, standing with her hood back in the center of the street. “I saw her earlier. She was heading out towards the shipyards in a speeder!”

Hux rolled his eyes.

“Take this woman into custody and get the truth out of her,” he said.

“You’re right, she’s lying!” someone else in the crowd shouted, “I saw Leia Organa climbing down a grate into the drainage pipes!”

“I saw her hiding in a backroom at the droidfight rink!” another person shouted. Suddenly the street was full of shouting. The stormtroopers were starting to get anxious.

“Time to go,” Leia said, hoisting herself up the side of one of the scrap buildings.

“We’re climbing?” Rose asked doubtfully.

“Hux will have blocked off all the streets around this perimeter, that’s why he knows I’m not on a speeder,” Leia grunted as she boosted herself up onto a second floor window. “As long as we jump the perimeter, we can get out. He doesn’t have our ship otherwise he wouldn’t be out here.”

“Alright,” Rose said, staring up the daunting climb of slippery metal, “I can do this.”

Chewbacca boosted her up to the window and then slowly she began to climb up to the roof of the building. Her knee quivered menacingly as she climbed, the shivering muscles reminding her of how new they were. She tried to hang by her arms as much as possible.

As she neared the roof, her hand slipped off of a seam in the metal, gashing her thumb and leaving her dangling for a moment by one hand. Chewbacca guided her ankle back to the foothold she’d found and Leia was immediately reaching down to grab her arm and hoist her up to the roof.

“Are you okay?” the general asked.

“I’m fine!” Rose gasped, trying her best to smile, “just slipped a little. The knee’s holding up.”

“Are you sure you can do this?” Leia asked, “I’m not leaving you behind here.”

“I can do it,” Rose assured her, “I’m okay.”

Down on the street the yelling was growing louder and a stromtrooper fired a few shots into the air.

“Tell me if you need to stop,” Leia said, “that’s an order, Tico.”

With that the general took a short running start, bent nearly double, and leapt from the wet corrugated metal of the roof over to the next. It wasn’t a long jump, Rose told herself. The houses here were so close it was barely more than a long step. She had to be brave, like Paige would be.

She jumped after the general, but staggered a little on the landing.

They ran several streets up the hill, trying to keep to the flat easy roofs as much as possible, but occasionally having to swing or once, climb up a chain with a hook Chewbacca tore off of a water collector tank.

Finally, they reached the main road that led up to the warehouse where they’d hidden the ship. It was lined with stormtroopers, a few light tanks, and worst of all, two walkers. It was too wide here to jump as they had been doing and if they tried bridging the gap with anything, they’d be right in the eyeline of the walkers. Leia lay horizontally across the roof and peered down over the edge.

“We can’t sneak over with those walkers patrolling,” she whispered.

“We could, well, there’s a signal tower right over there,” Rose said, worried to even suggest it. The signal towers of Donovia climbed hundreds of feet up into the smoggy atmosphere. If they could get up high enough, they could swing over above the roof line where the walkers were searching. “We could try to hook that chain to the first platform.”

“Rose, can you handle that much climbing?” Leia said.

“Of course, general,” Rose said, “I’ll handle it. It won’t be pleasant, but I’ll make it work.”

Leia looked uneasy, but gestured to Chewbacca with the chain. The wookie waited until the walkers had turned and then crouched to throw the chain up and out to the side of the signal tower. It caught and he tugged it once to assure it was steady.

“You first,” Leia invited him. Chewbacca grabbed the chain and with the ease of a wookie used to the forests of Kashyyyk, he swung over and clung to the side of the signal tower without a sound.

“I’ll follow you,” Rose said, allowing the general to catch the chain as Chewbacca swung it back to them. Leia nodded and with unexpected grace, let herself sail over the gap until Chewbacca caught her and steadied her on the other side.

Rose took a deep breath. She caught the chain successfully as they threw it back although her hands were shaking. Down below one of the stormtroopers checked in on the radio to report no one passing.

Rose clamped her fingers around the chain links and tried to wrap her legs with it as best she could. Then she took a deep breath. Be brave, she told herself. Don’t make them have to come back for you. Don’t be a burden. And she stepped off.

The swing across went alright, but as she tried to grab for Chewbacca and the signal tower, he knee finally gave out. She felt herself sliding down the metal chain and she hit the rooftop and rolled with a deafening crash. Stars were bursting behind her eyes from the pain.

“Up there!” a stormtrooper yelled and a second later, she felt the white hot burn of a laser firing into the roof right next to her.

Rose rolled to the side, unable to stand, and crawled over as far as she could go.

“Rose!” Leia was calling to her from somewhere ahead, “Run!”

“I can’t!” Rose tried to scream back, sliding and crawling over the slick metal.

She glanced back and saw both walkers taking aim now at the roof. Speeder bikes of stormtroopers were flooding out of the side streets now. Rose stifled a sob.

Then suddenly, a pair of warm furry arms enveloped her and lifted her just as the walkers fired. Chewbacca flung her over his shoulder and then jumped.

“Off the roof, get to cover,” Leia was yelling somewhere ahead, but Rose was facing backwards now, watching helplessly as troopers flooded towards them.

Chewbacca slid down the side of a peaked roof and caught himself on a window ledge before dropping to the ground. He roared and squeezed Rose tighter into his arms.

“I’m so sorry!” she sobbed a little into his arm. Her leg still felt like it was on fire.

She and the wookie sprinted down a street, ducking around blaster fire.

“Almost there!” Leia said, falling into step behind Chewbacca. Just then one of the speeder bikes pulled out in front of them and opened fire.

Leia and Chewbacca both dove to the side, sending Rose tumbling down onto the street. She fumbled for the blaster stuck deep inside her raincoat with cold, numb fingers. Chewbacca seized her again, but this time as he lifted, she fired a few shots towards the bike over his shoulder. She hit the stormtrooper squarely on one hand and the bike spun into a wall.

The pursuers momentarily distracted by this, Leia and Chewbacca made a break for the warehouse. They made it to the doors just as another three speeder bikes pulled into the street behind them.

“Go, get the ship started!” Leia yelled, letting Chewbacca and Rose through first while she laid down cover fire with her own blaster.

The wookie popped open the cockpit and let Rose down gently onto the floor, while leaping into one of the pilot seats of the U-wing they’d taken and starting the engines. Leia followed behind by a few seconds and as soon as the hatch was sealed, they took off, speeding right out through the open warehouse doors and sending the stormtroopers on their bikes scatting in every direction to get out of the way.

“I’m so sorry,” Rose kept repeating as the ship rocked and careened away from the ground artillery. She dragged herself into the jumpseat they’d added to the back wall and strapped in as best as she could. Straining, she managed to reach the med kit on the wall and with fumbling fingers, she pulled out a wrap she could use to at least reduced the swelling on her twisted knee.

“Have they scanned us?” Leia asked as they spun out of the way of a few laser bolts. “We’ve got shuttles launching back to the destroyer.”

Chewbacca roared a little and gestured towards a far away cloud of TIE fighters emerging at the edge of the atmosphere.

“Yep, they’ve scanned us,” Leia said grimly. “No jumps then, we have to lose them first.”

“General, please, I’m so sorry,” Rose said again, “you should have left me. You should never have taken me, I’m weighing you down. I should have resigned from active duty, I wasn’t ready, I’m sorry.”

A few tears slid down her nose as she said it. Sometimes a person needed to be left behind, she knew. Like Paige had left her when she was transferred to the Raddus. Like Finn had left her when he was needed across the galaxy.

“Hold it together,” Leia’s voice snapped her out of her tears. She wasn’t angry, but firm. “I need you to find us a way out of here, Rose.”

“Alright, alright,” Rose said, wiping at her face and pulling out a few nav charts from behind her seat. “We’ve got the Parlemian route on one side, that’s too clear. Roche Industries would be a short jump, but they might help hide us if the First Order follows. Oh! There’s an unexplored nebula in the next quadrant that might contain enough charge to mess with their sensors! There’s a tiny dwarf planet nearby that's used as a trash dump so there'll be some cover.”

“We’ll risk the nebula,” Leia said, firing as a few TIE fighters streaked towards them, “I’m not dragging in our allies yet.”

Chewbacca spun the ship again through the firing TIE fighters and they broke out of the atmosphere in time to see the destroyer pivoting slowly towards them.

“They’re sending a message on our frequency,” Rose said, checking the comms as Chewbacca concentrated on evading the TIEs and Leia manned the guns. The staticy sneer of General Hux filled the cockpit.

“You cannot outrun us now General,” he said, “turn yourself in and we can talk. We would value your cooperation and reward it accordingly.”

“I’m sorry, who is this?” Leia shouted into the comms.

“This is General Hux of the First Order,” the crackling voice replied coldly.

“Can you get me whoever's in charge, I’d like to speak to an officer, not some Genial Hutt,” Leia shouted back. “I’m not a fan of Hutts.”

“This is General Hux!” the man’s voice roared back, but Leia cut off the comms before he could get farther.

“I really despise that man,” she muttered to herself with a grin. The ship lurched as a blaster clipped the wing, leaving a scorch mark the astromech droid outside doused in foam. “How far to that nebula?”

“Coordinates are up,” Rose said, “Ready to jump.”

The ship surged forward as they jumped and then with a rattle, they blinked into a new quadrant more out of the way. For a few seconds, there was nothing around them but the looming form of an enormous nebula of yellowish dust. Then, inevitably the destroyer jumped into the space behind them and the TIE fighters returned on every side.

“We can outrun that destroyer for a while, but we need to get these TIE fighters off,” Leia said as a blast sailed dangerously close to their left engine. “Any ideas?”

Chewbacca roared before executing a tumbling spin that gave Leia a shot at a few of them. One took a hit and crashed into another flying close as it broke up.

“They’re flying tight,” Rose noticed, “I could try sending a signal jammer. If they can’t talk to each other when they get close they might not be able to fence us in.”

“Do it!” Leia said through gritted teeth as she pivoted in her seat to aim at a fighter that had just pulled into position above them.

Rose pushed herself forward to reach the console and ducking under Chewbacca’s arms, she stuck one of her corrupted drivers into the comm display before pushing it out as a beacon.

Immediately the fighters swarming around them exploded outward away from each other. A few rocked unsteadily, suddenly unsure how to judge their speed.

“They noticed that!” Leia laughed.

Ahead of them they were starting to enter the beginning of the trash dump. Crystals of yellow mineral floated past them making the vacuum glitter. Rose watched a TIE fighter swerve barely out of the way of the wreckage of an old frigate surrounded by a halo of empty crates.

“We’re lucky I’m not trying to fly this thing,” Leia gasped as Chewbacca dove and tumbled through the trash and the wookie made a sound that might have been a laugh.

“I’m picking up interference,” Rose said hopefully, “we’ve got plenty of charges and weird signals bouncing around.”

“As soon as we lose those fighters in the cloud, try another jump,” Leia ordered.

The ship dove down into a denser tendril of the nebula. In the thick dust it was impossible to see the junk coming until it was almost on top of them. Two more of the TIE fighters flamed out as they tried to pursue, visible only as flashes in the dust.

“Looks like they’re falling back to the destroyer for more cover,” Rose said, “but they’re still coming after us.”

“Hux is going to try to blast his way through this thing,” Leia said with wonder, “I didn’t think he had the guts. Must be desperate.”

“He’s going to blast his way right through us if he’s not careful,” Rose yelled as a laser hit the shadowy form of an old engine beside them sending a wave of debris over the ship. She was flung back into her seat, but pulled herself forward again as soon as the ship steadied.

“There’s no way they have our signal anymore in this, we’re basically blind,” Rose said, checking the scanners again, “but we can’t jump until we get clear of this junk!”

“More ships up ahead!” Leia yelled, “Rose, who am I looking at?”

Rose peered forward. The scanners were next to useless now in the storm. She was still picking up the faint crackle of artillery from Hux’s destroyer behind them, but up ahead there was no signal. She squinted through the haze of dust.

Three massive shapes were looming in front of them. They must be ships, but they weren’t shaped like any she recognized.

“They don’t look like destroyers,” she said uncertainty. “Could be more junk?”

The shapes were clearly not junk, she realized. They were moving.

“Stop the ship!” Rose suddenly yelled, hoping she was doing the right thing. “Wait!”

Chewbacca reversed the thrusters and they slowly drifted to a stop.

The three massive shapes emerging from the cloud were joined by two more behind them. They moved closer and through the dust Rose began to make out more details.

The ships were massive, finned at the sides, and covered with a rough tapestry of protrusions that her mind could only identify as something like a the complex webbing of a coral reef. They were difficult to comprehend even through the clouds of dust due to the irregular swirls of detail crossing their outsides. But they were clearly ships, Rose decided, as she noticed openings in their sides where now smaller ships were streaming out.

“What is that?” Leia said, and no one could answer.

Just then the star destroyer behind them blasted its way through another old hyperspace connecter and everything went insane.

The massive fleet of ships in front of them opened fire. White hot plasma shot out in every direction and Rose saw it tearing through the First Order shields like they were delicate lace. One blast hit their wing and Rose stared for a second as a substance like nothing she’d seen before coated the wing and ate through the metal, seemingly unaffected by the droid's coolant foam.

Chewbacca roared as alarms started to sound throughout the ship. None of the First Order ships were even paying attention to them anymore as they sputtered out beneath the fire from the unknown fleet.

“Emergency beacon, now!” Leia yelled and slammed a few switches on the console. “No encryption, get it to everyone!” Rose pulled out her jammer stick and switched to their distress channel, highest priority.

Chewbacca managed to regain some control of their spinning ship and sent them rocketing back out of the nebula as quickly as they could fly.

The destroyer behind them was firing back now at the mysterious fleet of ships, but Rose saw that while the plasma bolts were massacring the TIE fighters, the First Order lasers were absorbing harmlessly into some sort of field around the coral-like shell of the other ship.

“Chewie, faster,” Leia urged through gritted teeth and Rose looked over to see that several of the smaller vessels were pursuing them. Like the larger base ships, they were organic in construction, although clearly designed as fighter ships. The material was the same coral-like growth with several tube formations in the front that seemed to be firing the molten plasma at them.

The wookie roared in distress as they nearly collided with a piece of an old imperial shuttle.

“Chewie, get us out of here!” Leia screamed, one of her shots finally connecting with the pursuing fighter on their tail and sending a ripple of cracks through the hard coral exterior.

Another blast slammed into them from behind and Rose was thrown back against the wall and her vision went grey.

***

“Sir we’re picking up a distress signal from General Organa’s ship,” Lieutenant Mindar shouted over the wailing of sirens on the bridge of the Finalizer.

General Armitage Hux had no words to respond for a moment. His pale eyes were fixed in front of him on the massive army that had emerged from nowhere. It was unreal. It was impossible.

“Sir, your orders!” Mindar urged again. Hux managed to shake himself back into conscious thought.

“Get out of this nebula!” he screamed, “and get me backup. Every ship in the quadrant, and then boost it further! We have five hostiles, destroyer class!”

“Sir, our nearest support ship in the quadrant is troop transport, trainees only,” Lieutenant Mindar said uncertainty. The ship rocked for a moment beneath them as something exploded down on the lower decks.

“If it has a canon, get it here!” Hux said, grabbing a nearby station for balance. “Get everything here!”

Then another blast hit the destroyer and Hux felt himself flying backwards, sliding down a wall, and letting his eyes close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm having tons of fun with this and I hope you're enjoying reading a fanfiction that is quickly becoming a frantic Nanowrimo-esque rush to type my hands off. 
> 
> Comment now and receive a complimentary set of steak knives.


	5. Accelerant

Poe had called another meeting in the main control room of Selvaris base to discuss a plan after Rey had reported back with her insights. Lando had been convinced to return for now, after it became apparent that no invaders from the Unknown Regions were jumping into the system immediately. He leaned against the wall by the door, refusing any offers to take a seat or stand around the central table where they were discussing their plan.

“As far as we can tell, what Lando saw isn’t a First Order trap,” Poe announced to the waiting pilots, “however, we still don’t know what it was. Our primary mission is still to restore freedom and democracy to the galaxy and if this other army poses a threat to that, then I’ll consider them just as bad as the First Order. But we also have to consider the possibility that, well, that they could be useful to us.”

“What do you mean?” Rey said, prickling with sudden alarm.

“I mean that if there is the possibility of another major military joining the conflict, they might be willing to form an alliance,” Poe said, “or at the very least, they might put a dent in the First Order before they’re driven back.”

Rey shook her head, a cold feeling dripping into her stomach.

“We can’t go down that path,” she said, “the moment you start to think that you can use one darkness to wipe out another, you’ve lost yourself.”

“And the chances seem slim, I guess, that these are friendly creatures?” Finn asked, glancing to Lando. Lando merely shook his head .

“Commander,” C’ai Threnalli finally spoke up, “what if we put this information out on the holonet? If we had people from every system, someone might know already what these creatures are. As you said, this might not be military intel to keep to ourselves.”

But before anyone could answer, every screen in the room began to flash and alarms began to sound.

“What’s happening?” Lando yelled, suddenly beckoned out of his corner by the pandemonium.

“That’s General Organa’s personal emergency signal,” Poe said, blood draining from his face.

“She’s sending coordinates and a distress signal for her ship,” Ozesha called, taking her post at the comms. “But she’s too far for us to talk to.”

“I’ll go,” Rey volunteered, “I can take the Millennium Falcon. If it’s the First Order that’s our only chance of escaping their tracking.”

“I’m going with you,” Finn immediately said.

“Sir, all of us are prepared to go for General Organa,” Captain Millham said, speaking apparently for all of the ground logistics who stood immediately behind her.

“No!” Poe said with more force than his genial voice usually possessed, “No. I’m not going to risk all of you.”

He ran a shaky hand through his hair and the room was quiet for a moment.

“I’m prepared to go,” Lando Calrissian finally said, “for Leia Organa.”

Poe looked up and Rey noticed him blink hard a few times.

“The Falcon goes and gets the General’s ship out,” Poe finally said, “the rest of you get to your ships and stay on the emergency channel. If we need you, we’ll call for backup.”

“We?” Finn asked.

“I’m flying,” Poe said, already sprinting out of the room and towards the ships. BB-8 was hurtling after him without waiting to be told.

Rey gave Finn an incredulous look.

“He’s flying the Falcon?”

“What? He’s our commanding officer!” Finn shrugged.

Then both of them dashed after Poe.

As Rey reached the Millennium Falcon the ramp was already down and she could hear Poe inside starting up the systems. Finn followed her and Lando right behind him.

“Wow,” Lando said as he stepped into the ship, his face breaking into the first smile they’d seen from him, “she’s still a gorgeous piece of junk.”

“Two of you better be down on those guns!” Poe yelled from the cockpit as the ramp sealed behind them. “Because we’re moving quickly here!”

Finn and Lando shrugged before each of them grabbed a headset and jumped towards the two gunner seats. Rey was left as co-pilot again, an odd feeling after weeks spent flying the ship alone.

As she entered the cockpit, BB-8 made a bemused beep at her from the doorway.

“Yes, I don’t know why he’s flying either since he’s never even touched a Corellian freighter before,” she said tightly to the droid before flinging herself down into the other seat.

“I can fly it,” Poe said, not even looking at her as he took the controls.

“Then you might want to turn on your dorsal stabilizers,” Rey suggested dryly. He switched them on.

“Look, I didn’t say you couldn’t help me,” he admitted sheepishly, “I just… we have to get there in time.”

Rey felt herself soften a little. It had been a long night. She was prickly. They were all prickly right now and no one was behaving their best.

The ship broke past the clouds of Selvaris and as soon as they were clear of the planet, Poe pressed the level forward and they jumped to hyperspace. At this distance, it might be nearly an hour before they could get to the general’s signal, even flying one of the faster ships in the galaxy. Rey tried to settle back into her seat, but found it was impossible to get comfortable.

She popped open one of the panels in front of her and fiddled a little with the wiring beneath.

“What are you doing?” Poe asked.

“Just a little modification I made,” she grinned, “if I bypass the system recharge during hyperspace we can come out of the jump ready to fire if we need to. It’ll burn us out if we do it too many times, but I figured… for emergencies.”

“In that case,” Poe said, fiddling for a moment with the navigation, “we’re going to pick up some extra speed on that gravity well the First Order uses.”

“You’re going to cut pretty close to the Core worlds,” Rey said, trying to hold back her doubt.

“If they want to chase me,” Poe said, “then they can chase me.”

Rey sighed.

“I’d better make sure our engines don’t fall out then,” she said, standing up, “the Falcon isn’t exactly known for its… stability.”

Rey made her way down a few of the winding halls to the internal Nav systems and set to work. This was the sort of pressure she preferred. Spotting problems before they happened, watching for overloads, and occasionally tweaking some of the older parts back into place with the help of BB-8. By the time Poe was calling her back to prepare for arrival, she was covered in a layer of grime and her hands were sore, but they’d made good time.

“Get ready,” Poe said as she strapped back in. He pulled a lever and they jumped out of hyperspace.

And into pandemonium.

No sooner had they appeared than Poe swore colorfully and pulled the ship up just in time to avoid hitting the debris exploding away from a disintegrating TIE fighter.

“Rey, what am I looking at here?” he said through gritted teeth as the ship swung perilously around what appeared to be a tangled mass of broken Republic battle droids floating in a field of trash.

They were in the middle of a battle, that much was clear, but who was fighting who was strangely not clear. From what she could tell, they had jumped to the edge of a nebula with a First Order destroyer taking heavy fire just emerging from the dust cloud. TIE fighters were streaking by on every side, but they didn’t seem interested in firing on the Millenium Falcon, which was remarkable on many levels.

Rey spotted a few other ships jumping around them just seconds after they arrived. A First Order troop transport appeared right in front of them and started firing over their dorsal while a few more First Order light cruisers jumped around the embattled destroyer.

“I’ve got a new signal from Leia’s ship,” Rey said, “up ahead of the TIE fighters!”

Poe dove the ship towards the signal and soon through the debris Rey could make out a tiny U-Wing fighter that had clearly sustained heavy damage. It was being pursued by a vessel unlike any Rey had seen before, something entirely foreign to even a scavenger who’d made a living knowing any kind of ship from the inside out. Her eyes felt unfocused as she was looking at it, like she couldn’t even make it out properly. As she looked around, she realized there were more of the strange ships swarming the First Order destroyer, but there was something oddly blurry and indistinct about them.

“Poe, Rey? We’ve got unknown ships here, do we fire?” Finn yelled over the comms.

“We fire! We fire!” Lando yelled back before Rey could even answer.

Just then, emerging from the huge yellow dust cloud behind them, Rey spotted something enormous. Huge dark shapes leaving the distorted void of the nebula.

“Rey, I need positioning on those ships!” Poe asked again, his practiced battle calm slightly fractured by the chaos of the situation.

“I can’t see them,” Rey said. She felt strange. Disconnected almost, like a dream. “I can’t see what I’m looking at.”

“What are you talking about?” Poe said, voice rising slightly, “I see them! They’ve been seen!”

Rey stared at vessel pursuing Leia’s ship as before her eyes it took a hit from one of their canons and shattered into pieces. It wasn’t real, something in her subconscious was telling her. There was nothing there.

“I just…” Rey whispered. She closed her eyes.

Fire. Destruction. Death. Fear. The First Order destroyer shuddering. The rush of adrenaline as pilots spun and ducked around enemy fire. And Leia’s tiny ship darting away from it all. Down below, a tiny dwarf planet. The far away feeling of grass.

And nothing else. No giant ships. No mysterious fighters. No unknown pilots.

“I can’t feel them,” she suddenly realized, “I can’t find them with the Force.”

“Okay, weird,” Poe said, “but perhaps you can work on that revelation a little later after we get the General’s ship out of trouble.”

“It’s not even like they’re dead,” Rey said, stretching her mind further, breaths coming deep and slow in her stomach, “they’re… nothing.”

“Nothing,” said a deep voice from behind her and she spun around. Kylo Ren, his face upturned and his eyes wide. She couldn’t tell for a moment if it was a memory or if she’d truly called him there.

Then he turned to look at her and she knew he was really there.

“What are they?” she asked, feeling the electric current of fear between them.

“There’s nothing there at all,” he said and she heard in his voice the same instinctive revulsion she felt, “they aren’t a part of the Force. Which is impossible. This is impossible.”

He turned to her and for a moment she forgot about his betrayal and his crimes. He was like her mirror. Fear and confusion reflecting in his black eyes, mouth slightly open as they both tried to imagine what they should do.

“Rey, we need you right now. Not Rey the Jedi,” Finn’s voice suddenly came into her ear through the headset, “we just need Rey.”

The ship lurched again as Poe managed to pull it level beside General Organa’s U-Wing. Rey shook her head a little, pushing the disorientation down and trying to shut her instincts away. She dug her nails into her palm, trying to center herself again. Kylo Ren vanished.

Something was sparking in front of her and as her eyes refocused she realized they’d blown something on the actuator for the dorsal cannons. She could fix that.

“BB-8, I need an insulator,” she called and the droid launched one at her from behind. The sparking stopped. Alright. That was something.

“General Organa, this is Commander Dameron, are you able to jump?” Poe was saying as he fumbled with the dials in front of him. Rey immediately leaned in to help him find the General’s ship on the comms. Finally, a staticky voice filtered in to their headsets.

“This is Rose Tico,” an unsteady female voice said over bursts of static, “I’m with the General. Our systems are failing, we lost the hyperspace drive along with main power. Don’t let them hit you, those weapons punch right through our shields.”

“Hey, Rose, it’s okay, we’re gonna pick you up, alright?” Poe said, “you just need to listen to me. Who else is in the cabin with you?”

“Chewie’s flying, General Organa is, she’s alive but I think the last hit knocked her out,” Rose said.

“Okay, we’re going to try a swallow, do you know what that is?” Poe said, his voice soothing and sure.

“I’m sorry, no,” Rose said and then coughed for a few seconds, “we’re venting something in here.”

“Keep listening to me, okay? I need you to find the button for an emergency ejection,” Poe said, “You’re going to pop out and we’re going to catch you. Easy as that.”

“You want me to eject us into the middle of the battle?” Rose coughed.

“I’m right above you,” Poe reassured her, “we’ll catch you in seconds.”

“Okay, I have the button,” Rose’s voice said, cutting and sputtering slightly.

Poe turned to Rey.

“Get down to the loading bay and get the door open. You’re going to have to catch them. If the General is out, she won’t be using her thrusters to guide herself in so you might have to grab her with something. Tell me you can do this right now,” Poe said, dropping all the semblance of calm from his voice.

“I can do it,” Rey said with a vigorous nod, “I’m okay now, I promise.”

She sprinted down the corridor to the main cargo hold. Slowly the ramp was opening in front of her and while she was protected by their atmo field, she could see the occasional spec of yellow dust getting caught and floating in. Right in front of her she could see the top of the U-Wing and behind it the looming shape of the unmapped dwarf planet below.

“Ready!” she yelled.

Down below her the smoldering U-Wing burst open and two pilot seats ejected. One of them was clattering into the hold in seconds after a short thruster burst. The other drifted for a second, but then Poe corrected back a few feet and Rey was able to seize a part of General Organa’s foot to pull her inside. On the floor Chewbacca was untangling himself from his chair.

“Poe, I’ve only got two of them!” Rey yelled into her headset. “Stay put!”

Rey squinted down into the now drifting U-Wing and saw another person still strapped in. They must have added in another seat on the go. There was no way Poe could get them close enough for Rey to grab her without burning the U-Wing and Rose with it.

Rey took a deep breath and reached out her hand.

She let her eyes close and felt the empty vacuum in front of her, the tiny shards of mineral and junk floating around them, gravity pulling at them, the rippling power of the ship’s thrusters, and then finally, the freezing body of a girl. Rey pulled. She felt her arm shaking although there was nothing straining her muscles.

Then she felt the gentle touch of someone clasping her hand. She opened her eyes.

Covered in ice and a thick raincoat, eyes open and amazed, Rose Tico was floating in front of her and holding on to her hand.

Rey let her concentration falter for a moment and both of them collapsed onto the floor. Chewbacca hit the button and the door hissed shut.

“I’ve got them,” Rey said into her headset.

General Organa stirred slightly and then shot upright.

“Was I in space again?” she asked blearily.

***

General Hux came to and tenderly touched his head. Blood was dripping down over one of his eyes, but he was able to slowly raise his head without throwing up so that was something. Alarms were wailing around him and he could see one of the massive ships that had come from the nebula was almost on top of them now.

“General?” said a voice from beside him and he saw one of the officers, Corgra, bending over him.

“Get through those shields. Now,” Hux ordered, struggling to his feet, “point defense, use the turrets.”

“Yes sir,” Corgra said, steadying him before rushing back to her post. A few of the other officers were stirring now and crawling back to their terminals.

“If you can’t bring even one of those things down we’ll lose half of a fleet,” Hux shouted as Corgra fumbled for a moment with the controls.

“Sorry sir, firing now,” she said. At this range, the turrets finally punched through and Hux saw a few chunks of the coral-like hull shatter.

Hux took a moment to test his legs. He’d be fit to go in a moment, but the ship was doubtful. The hyperdrive was out and there were fires burning on almost all decks now. He could smell failure. It had a certain reek.

“Sir, we’re losing support vessels,” Lieutenant Mindar said, “distress calls from that troop transport. They aren’t equipped for combat like this.”

But Hux was no longer there to answer.

He’d always had an instinctive sense of when a fight was lost. He’d developed a knack for getting out before that loss caught up to him.

Hux bolted down the hall outside the bridge to the officer escape pods. He slid inside and as soon as the doors closed, launched.

***

“Come on,” Rey said, hoisting Rose into her arms while Chewbacca helped General Organa to her feet. Rey laid Rose down on the couch beside the Dejarik table and wrestled off her outer raincoat. “Get me something to warm her up!”

BB-8 helpfully rolled up and extended a lighter. Chewbacca roared in exasperation and then pulled a few heat reflecting blankets and a med kit out of a compartment on the wall. Once she was wrapped securely in a few layers of the heat reflectors, Rose began to shiver and slowly seemed to come back to herself.

“A Jedi saved me,” she said, goggling at Rey with a smile slowly spreading across her face before her eyes crossed a little and she slumped backwards.

“What’s happening?” Finn’s voice broke through the tense silence as he skidded into the room. He froze as soon as he saw Rose and seemed to lose the ability to speak for a moment.

“The very exact thing that I warned you about!” Lando said, following close behind him.

“Calrissian,” Leia said evenly when she saw him, “good to see you made it through.”

She turned on her heel then and walked briskly back to the cockpit to loom over Poe. Rey and the rest of them scampered after her, leaving Chewbacca to tend to the partially conscious and dazed Rose.

“Leia, come on,” Lando said, catching up to her as they reached the cockpit. Her face face finally broke into a smile as he wrapped his arms around her.

“Sorry, why is everyone hugging in here while I’m still trying to fly this ship?” Poe asked irritably.

“I’m the ranking officer, Dameron, and I’ll hug who I want,” Leia snapped back. “What’s going on out there.”

“We’ve got five hostile unknown ships with weapons that cut through our shields, ours and those First Order ships,” Poe reported, “No more of those smaller craft pursuing us yet. I can outrun them in the Falcon and then we can jump out of this mess.”

Beside them there was a massive flash of light. The First Order troop transport had lost half of its engines and was spinning wildly. Poe pulled back and narrowly avoided clipping it as it passed.

“What’s a trainee transit doing out here?” Finn wondered as it passed. “They’ve barely started sims, they’re not ready for battle.”

“General Hux is probably calling for all the help he can get right now,” Leia said with disgust.

The transport hadn’t broken up, but instead it was using the remaining half of its engines to attempt a landing down on the dwarf planet. Faintly, Rey could make out a flurry of escape pods launching as it fell.

Then, turning together like a flock of deadly birds, Rey saw a group of the enemy fighters break off and pursue them.

“Poe, they’re going to get slaughtered on the ground by those things,” Finn said, a faint edge of panic in his voice. “We’ve got to give them some cover.”

“Those are First Order stormtroopers,” Poe gaped, “I’m not going to risk our lives to give them cover!”

“Rey, General Organa, please,” Finn tried, turning back to them, “they’re not even fully trained yet. Ships like that are taking them to start battle training, they’re barely sixteen!”

“I-” Rey started, but became distracted as the shape of Kylo Ren appeared before her again.

“They’re destroying you,” he said, “how?”

Rey shook him away. Their shared distress was crashing them into one another faster than she could control now.

“Preparing to jump,” Poe ordered, “strap in.”

“Please don’t do this, please,” Finn was still pleading.

“I said get to a seat!” Poe yelled.

“If we don’t care about their lives, how are we better?” Finn exploded back at him, “they could be me, they could be my squadmates, and you wouldn’t care!”

“I care about the people I’m responsible for,” Poe fired back, “I care about keeping us safe! Now, if you don’t strap in to a seat, I’ll discharge you from your position.”

Finn stepped backwards and hesitated in the doorway back to the hall.

“Commander Dameron,” Leia said softly, still standing in the center of the cockpit. “Abort the hyperspace jump. Head down to the surface and cover the escape pods. That’s an order.”

The whole cockpit was eerily silent except for the faint hum of the hyperspace drive powering down.

“Finn, I want you back on that cannon,” Leia said in the silence, “Lando, take the co-pilot seat. Rey, I need you to help me get Rose back on her feet.”

Finn and Lando vanished back to their positions without a word. Chewbacca made a few grunts of affirmation as they came back to the couch and the Dejarik table. Leia jerked her head towards the other gunner seat and the wookie left without comment.

“Are you alright?” Leia asked Rey conspiratorially as they knelt down beside Rose.

“I’m fine,” Rey said tightly.

“She’s warmed up, just a little disoriented still,” Leia said, checking Rose’s pupils as she stirred a little. “Find me something in there to get her awake and something for pain, a knee brace if we’ve got it.”

“General, did you… can you feel anything strange about those unknown ships?” Rey asked as she fumbled through the supplies.

“Well they don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen,” Leia said, “why?”

“I don’t think they’re connected to the Force,” Rey whispered, “and I have no idea what that means.”

“You’d know better than me,” Leia said with a sad smile.

Rey shivered a little. She was the one who was supposed to know things now. The hair on the back of her neck prickled and she glanced over her shoulder.

Kylo Ren, reaching out towards something she couldn’t see. His black hair blew back a little and she saw his shoulders roll forward. Aggression. Fear. Then he glanced back over his shoulder and their eyes met again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know it is actually infuriating to try to verbally articulate a space battle? Also shit is about to go crazy so strap in folks. 
> 
> Comments, kudos, and shares will automatically enter you into a drawing for an all expenses paid trip to literal heaven, you angels.


	6. Flare

Around half of the First Order High Command sat nervously around the table of the Dreadnaught Incinerator’s war room staring at Supreme Leader Kylo Ren as he abruptly jolted back to himself. His mind felt raw and wild, only half his own, and he grabbed the edge of the table for a moment to steady himself. The high command watched silently, and he felt their doubt seeping into the room with each second.

“Stop it,” he snarled, and drove his fist into the table, cracking the holodisplay and turning the plans projected on it into a blurry distorted mass.

“Supreme Leader, perhaps you would like to adjourn the meeting for today?” Vice Admiral Damarcus asked hesitantly. “We can discuss constructing a planetary base at another time, when you feel more… ready.”

Kylo Ren squeezed his eyes shut, trying to understand what he’d just seen. The girl. Rey. She’d been afraid, afraid like he’d never felt from her before. She’d reached out and found something outside of the Force: an impossibility. He felt his stomach clench for a moment at the feeling of it. It was like a part of his mind had been carved off.

The High Command was waiting for him to say something. They weren’t yet tamed as they had been with Snoke.

Snoke. At first he’d been eager to burn down every memory of the former Supreme Leader. But after a lifetime of feeling the soft velvet darkness of Snoke brushing against his mind, Kylo Ren found it surprisingly difficult to forget him entirely. He caught himself often imagining conversations with his old master, playing out old scoldings and warnings before he acted. And no matter how hard he tried to scrub out the corruption, he was left aching and letting the thoughts of Snoke sprout again.

He had to make a decision. Anything to stop the High Command from looking at him like he was some sort of pitiable rabid dog.

“I want every ship in this fleet in defensive formations around the core,” Kylo Ren said slowly, forcing the words out as he raced through possible scenarios. “We’re at war.”

“I’m sorry, my lord, I don’t-” Vice Admiral Damarcus began, but then his breath caught in his throat.

“I said do it now!” Kylo Ren yelled, “Back to your ships and prepare for battle!”

A man at the end of the table stood up. Kylo Ren spared a glance for him. That general again, Avadear, the old TIE pilot. He seemed ready to speak, when the door to the room slid open. A terrified logistics officer stood in the doorway.

“Supreme Leader,” he said, kneeling quickly, “forgive me, I just… General Hux’s ship just sent a distress call to the entire fleet. He has five destroyer class hostiles in an empty quadrant by the Parlemian trade route. And now… all of our bases in the upper sectors are reporting an unknown fleet jumping into position.”

The High Command fell completely silent. General Avadear sat down again.

“Vice Admiral Damarcus, get your ships back to the Core worlds and hold them,” Kylo Ren said again, unable to keep his voice from shaking this time. “Admiral Staed, circle the inner rim. The rest of you with me.”

This time, the officers moved without comment.

Kylo Ren didn’t wait for them to leave the room before he was heading for the bridge. Communications alerts were coming in faster than the lieutenants could record them.

“They’ve evacuated all the bases in the Braxant sector,” someone yelled over the chaos.

“Patrols just spotted more jumping in at the edge of the Quelii sector!” another officer reported.

“We’ve lost contact with all of our ships in Atrivis!”

As Kylo Ren watched, the charts in front of him filled with red points as more and more ships opened fire in the upper quadrants.

“Supreme Leader,” General Jethnea addressed him as he stared for a moment, entranced by the sight of half of the galaxy slipping rapidly out of his grasp. “We should cut them off at the Braxant sector. Break their fleet in two.”

“The Braxant sector is gone, don’t you understand?” Kylo Ren said. His voice was tight, verging dangerously on hysterical. “We’ve lost the whole upper quadrant. They’re going to cut through and come down the major trade routes to the Core.”

“But how....?” General Jethnea trailed off, “...how did this happen?”

“I’m taking personal command of all of your ships,” Kylo Ren finally decided, “jump my fleet to the edge of the Quelii sector. We can’t let them take the Hydian Way.”

“We’ll lose the Finalizer and every ship General Hux has pulled in for backup if we don’t reinforce the Parlemian route where they’ve already engaged,” General Avadear said before the pilots had coordinated the jump. It was sound advice, Kylo Ren realized with a grimace, but for the fact that he was already fairly certain that was where Rey was if she was already fighting those ships.

“I’ll clean up after General Hux once we’ve finished with the Hydian Way,” he replied tersely. “Jump the fleet.”

The Incinerator surged forward into hyperspace.

“Get my ship ready to launch,” Kylo Ren ordered.

“Supreme Leader, it would be incredibly damaging to our cause to lose another leader senselessly in battle,” General Avadear said, “I understand more than most the frustrations of having to watch from afar, but we need you on the bridge.”

The officers on the bridge hesitated.

The fleet emerged from hyperspace over Dathomir. The red sun bathed the bridge in a bloody light as the destroyers appeared in tight formation.  
Before them, a line of massive ships were stretched around the planet. They were bizarre organic formations, slightly irregular in shape and size, but moving perfectly in sync.

It was just as he’d felt with Rey. He could see them, but he felt nothing but the empty void. It was like trying to focus after a blow to the head. He struggled to follow their motions. No Force to suggest their size, their shape. No Force to subtly whisper which way to move, how they might respond. There was something revolting about it, something pathetic and broken. Even when he felt the light within him, tearing away at him, it was unimaginably better than the feel of that nothingness.

The largest ship seemed to pulse slightly with light and then it fired onto the planet below.

Dathomir flashed and then ignited. The planet itself did not break up or crumble, but the atmosphere caught and burned greedily into nothing in a matter of moments.

The other vessels were turning towards the First Order fleet and smaller fighters began to stream from their sides.

“Engaging cannons,” one of the lieutenants said, “shields are ready.”

Then both sides fired. The Incinerator shook. Every soul on the bridge stared as the destroyer beside them crumpled beneath the enemy fire. The top bridge tower broke off entirely with a shower of light.

Alarms were going off now throughout the bridge. The shields were useless. Dathomir was dying slowly and painfully below them. Kylo Ren felt a shiver run down his back.

Of course. Snoke had to have known. He’d been in the Unknown Regions for years, before the empire even. Of course he would have anticipated this. Kylo Ren could imagine the sound of his laughter mocking him. So you thought you could overthrow everything, boy. So you thought you could have everything, take what even your grandfather could never grasp. No. You can hold the entire galaxy in your hand for a second before something else will snatch it away.

Of course.

He felt his mouth curl back into an unfamiliar position. He was laughing. It was unstoppable; even as he choked it down, it bubbled back up. He threw back his head and laughed until he felt his throat grow hoarse and tears burning in his eyes. It was a sick joke, but funny nonetheless.

“Your orders, sir!” General Avadear was yelling at him, but there were no orders he knew how to give anymore. The General tried to grab his shoulder but he sent him skidding back against the wall with a jerk of his hand.

“Get in close!” Avadear finally shouted, pulling himself back to his feet, “we’ve got to risk a head to head fight or they’ll crush us. We don’t even know where to aim on those things to take their shields down!”

Kylo Ren let him. Let him take command and try. As the engines fired and they drew closer to the other vessels, he could sense the squealing metal and fraying wiring below in the Incinerator. Then finally he made himself look up again at the other vessels. Slowly the laughter faded.

He would not let himself die here just as Snoke had likely imagined he would. Spite alone would show him another way.

With one hand, he reached out. The back of his neck prickled and he spared a moment to turn back. Rey crouched on the ground somewhere. She looked lost. He turned back.

There was no way to feel the enemy ships, to look for something that they could hit. He was hardly more useful now than General Avadear, who had at least gotten them close enough in that they could wreak some damage before they blew up.

TIE fighters were streaking out to try to hit the surface of the large vessels, but the smaller enemy ships were taking them down with one hit from their weapons. One of the TIEs exploded right in front of the bridge and he heard the brief clash of metal before the wreckage slipped by and under the ship. He let himself feel for a moment the brief panic, a flash of pain, and then nothing as the pilot disintegrated with his ship.

Which was something.

An idea had begun to percolate that in normal circumstances would be laughable, but what did he have to lose now?

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The air around him shivered a little. Pressure built in his ears and they popped again. He could feel the massive metal shape of the detached bridge from the fallen destroyer floating behind them. Nothing holding it back, it was dead. No power. Systems cold.

His fingers flexed as he pushed himself harder. Make it move, boy, use that strength don’t be afraid of it, the voice of Snoke coaxed him in his memories. It felt hard to breath. Delicately, almost imperceptibly he felt a blood vessel burst in his eye. His teeth ground against one another until his jaw ached. He reached out further, as though straining his shoulder would be enough to make it move.

The pressure in the room grew until his ears were ringing and he couldn’t tell if his feet were on the ground anymore. Work harder, let the pain carry you there, his thoughts came in the voice of Snoke, command it to move. Just like a rock. Easier than a rock. No friction, no gravity pulling it down.

And then a flash of Luke Skywalker, himself the student, don’t lift the rock, Ben, just let it move.

The edge of the star destroyer bridge tower plunged into the side of the largest enemy ship, tearing through the intricate webbed exterior and sending a wave of debris out from the side. Kylo Ren let himself fall forward with a gasp. His mouth was unexpectedly full of blood where he’d bitten down on his tongue and for a second he could only cough as it dribbled down onto the floor. He felt an exhaustion so deep that he felt his eyes trying to close.

But he forced them back open and finally, once the coughing stopped, raised his head. With the help of a nearby terminal, he pushed himself back to his feet. He knew he probably looked like a nightmare with blood dripping down his chin and one eye half red, trembling and swaying on his feet. The officers had gone completely silent and were staring at him with a different look. Awe, he decided.

“Now… will someone prepare my ship,” he finally managed to say, spitting another clot of blood onto the floor.

This time there was nothing but quiet compliance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I thought we needed to spend a little time with this bad boi before we race onward through the plot. Next chapter will be up pretty soon and we'll be jumping back to our heroes after their fun and funky space battle. Extra thanks and eternal gratitude for the comments and kudos!


	7. Smoke

The Millennium Falcon broke through the atmosphere of the dwarf planet. It was a barren place, more of stopover and occasional hideout for thieves than a colonized planet. Huge fields of golden-brown grass rippled below them, punctuated only occasionally by larger groves of trees that grew up around valleys or creeks. A couple old freighters were rusting into skeletons in the distance. Not an ideal place to be caught on the ground without cover.

As the Falcon soared through the clouds, Poe Dameron spotted three shadows growing on the grass below. The unknown fighters were strafing the ground near the smoldering wreckage of the trooper transport. Fire from the ship meant that the grasslands were burning and soon those escape pods would melt, leaving no cover but a nearby creek bed with a copse of trees.

Although before Poe might have felt excited, even joyful, at the prospect of shooting down hostile ships in the Millennium Falcon, now he found himself silently pushing down a lump in his throat. There was no clear reason for him to feel the way he felt. He’d make a call, he’d been overruled. But as the ship sped down towards the smoking grasslands, Poe felt heavy.

In an X-Wing no matter how badly he’d flown, it was just him and BB-8 he was risking. And then on the Raddus he’d taken a whole cruiser under his protection. And he’d said he would save them. And he’d failed.

“You fly her like I always did,” Lando said from beside him, snapping him out of his head. “Holding back just a little. I was always worried she’d break down with all the mods Han added, but he just pushed through. Legendary ship, but broken down twice the time she ever spent flying.”

“You trying to tell me I need to push her?” Poe said, clearing his throat.

“I’m telling you I get it,” Lando replied.

The three coral fighters turned to take another pass at the wreckage of the transport ship. Poe pulled up and spun the Falcon all the way around to give both gunners a chance to fire. The laser bolts almost connected, but the coral fighters turned sharply onto their sides to dodge out of the way. Poe swerved around to follow, but two of them split off to try to get behind him.

“Hold on,” Poe said through gritted teeth. He shot the Falcon up as high as he dared with the two fighters on his tail and then slammed the thrusters down to send the ship into a vertical spin. Something groaned down in the engine as the ship whipped around, and Poe squinted to keep himself from getting disoriented.

Something exploded to their right and Poe leveled out the ship before they lost too much altitude. One fighter down. The other was arcing up above them while one more was still circling the wreckage of the troop transport.

Poe let his breath hiss through his teeth. It was only flying, he told himself, no matter who was on the ground below. He glanced down and saw some of the surviving stormtroopers crawling through the long grass, trying to get to the creek without being spotted at the expense of risking getting swept up in the rapidly burning prairie.

Deciding to try the same tactic, Poe let the coral fighter behind him stay in position and dove the Falcon down until it was barely skimming along the top of the grass. The smoke rose up around them and Poe darted around the blasts coming at their tail until he reached the transit ship again.

Lando seemed to realize his plan.

“Ready to fire, both cannons on my signal,” he said into the headset.

Just as it seemed like they were about to crash into the transit ship, Poe yanked back on the controls and Lando fired the emergency landing stabilizers to stop them dead in front of the ship and then, with a roar of protest from the engines, backwards. Poe felt just the tiniest suggestion of a scrape against the ground before he gave the thrusters a quick upward push.

“Now!” Lando yelled and both cannons fired onto the coral fighters they’d caught out in front of them with their backs turned.

One of the ships took a direct hit in the air and exploded into fragments, but the other only seemed to lose power and made a rough landing in the grass, sending up a cloud of dust until finally coming to a stop.

“Now that was flying the Falcon” Lando said with a sigh of relief, pulling his headset down and giving Poe a clasp on the shoulder. “And you didn’t let them get a shot in on us. You kept everyone safe.”

“You have no idea how much I needed to hear that,” Poe groaned, letting his head drop back against the seat for a moment. “General, what’s our plan?”

There were no more enemy ships directly pursuing them, but glancing up Poe could see that there was still plenty of trouble going on above. Leia and Rey both appeared again at the doorway to the cockpit.

“Did we get all of them?” Rey asked, peering out at the smoldering grasslands as Poe circled the ship around the crash sight.

“Blew two out of the sky and one went down in the grass,” Poe reported.

“Bring us down near the one you crashed,” Leia ordered, “Rey, get everyone armed. We’ll leave Rose and Chewie with the ship.”

Rey immediately ducked back out to get ready, leaving Poe with Lando and Leia.

“You were hoping for this weren’t you,” Poe realized as he turned the ship towards the black singe where the fighter had skidded down, “you wanted information on who we’re fighting before we jump back to base.”

“The faster we figure it out, the better we can prepare ourselves,” Leia said, “I’m not as good and virtuous as you think I am, Dameron, unlike your friends.”

“Now wait a second,” Lando protested as the Millenium Falcon set down into the grasslands, “I didn’t sign on for this. We’ve got all the information we need about these creatures. We’ve got a plan. The plan is run for your lives. You all are barely staying clear of the First Order, you don’t need to be adding the galactic invaders to your list.”

“I don’t recall asking you to come, Calrissian,” Leia shot back coldly, “as I recall you made it very clear to me that you weren’t interested in the Resistance. So if you have another ship just waiting around here, by all means take off.”

“I came because you were in trouble, I promised you I’d always come if you were in trouble,” Lando retorted, his eyes pleading but his tone firm, “but all you ever seem to do is keep putting yourself in harms way and I couldn’t keep watching us lose everything again and again.”

“I’m sure that must have been very hard for you, Lando,” Leia said in a tone that made Poe shiver a little, “having to watch me lose everything.”

And with that she left.

The Millenium Falcon cooled for a moment, a few vents hissing faintly. Poe left Lando to sit and stew in the cockpit while he headed off down the hall. Rose was sitting up now looking mostly restored but for a few compression wraps around her leg and she was holding a pair of blasters.

“Oh, hi Poe,” she said with a smile as he passed through, “I haven’t seen you since we got to fly those skimmers on Crait.”

“Yeah not so fun day, although you were incredible” he shrugged, “you know Finn’s done nothing but worry about you since we left for Selvaris.”

“Thanks for… letting me know,” she said uncertainly. Just then BB-8 popped out of the hold to see what was happening.

“Hey buddy, you listen to Rose while I’m gone,” he told the droid, “and keep yourself safe!”

BB-8 burbled confidently that it wouldn’t be a problem and displayed a few sharp looking tools threateningly. Poe smiled and then jogged down to the entrance.

Leia was there having shed her raincoat and added a long narrow blaster accompanied by Rey with a blaster at her belt along with a newly complete lightsaber in her hand. Finn had joined them as well, although he seemed eager not to make eye contact with Poe.

“Let’s find out what these things are,” Leia said as soon as Poe joined them and then started down the ramp.

They approached the wreckage of the ship cautiously, spread out around it in a semicircle watching for any movement. Up close, Poe could make out the ship's material better. It was rough and porous like coral, but at the front there were a few long tube-like organisms tinged faintly red that were steaming slightly. Poe gently pressed his hand against one and then pulled back quickly at the heat. Whatever the appendages were, he had a feeling that was what they were using to fire out the plasma.

The top of the ship was a shiny black carapace with tendrils of coral arching across it as well as a substance at the edges that seemed to be some sort of muscle tissue covered in a viscous fluid.

“I can’t feel any of it with the Force,” Rey said in wonder as she circled around it with her hand outstretched, and then gently she pressed her palm against it, “it’s like there’s nothing there. Even when I touch it I just feel… my hand touching something rough.”

“Yeah, well, welcome back to normal life,” Poe said, pointing his blaster at some of the muscle tissue, “I say we crack this thing without the mystical Jedi powers.”

He fired and watched with fascination as the membrane slithered back from the cockpit.

“This ship is alive,” he realized aloud just as the shell around the cockpit burst open.

At first all he could register was that something huge had just leapt at him. Poe staggered back before he felt something wrap around his legs and he fell backwards.

A creature was standing over him. It was massive, he registered, but mostly humanoid in shape. Its face was flat and hollow as a skull, and it had one eye that was a dark red and the other pale with a slit pupil. Its body was a mess of scars and cuts, but not only scars. Different tones, different limbs, one hand a mass of claws while the other was more delicate and pale grey. Its armor seemed to be made of the same tough black shell that had coated the cockpit of the ship. In one hand it was holding a long black whip which was wrapped around his legs, but as he watched, the whip curled back seemingly of its own will and Poe realized it too had some sort of sentience.

As Poe scrambled backwards, fumbling for his blaster, the creature turned away from him and with a lash of the whip, deflected the lasers from both Leia and Finn’s blasters. Its lips pulled back to two large fangs apparently grafted onto its lower jaw.

“I send you to Yun-Yammka,” it snarled, and Poe realized it must be familiar with their language or else had been given a translator with the express purpose of communicating to them, “and I grant you the gift of death.”

With that it flourished the whip again, and Poe threw up his hand desperately to try to shield himself. But the blow did not come.

Instead he heard a familiar, powerful hum. He opened his eyes and looked up. Rey had leapt in front of him and in her hands she held the lightsaber. The blade was longer than the one she’d broken and it shone a brilliant green.

But even the lightsaber did not cut cleanly through the whip. Sparks flew between them for a moment, and then the creature threw Rey backwards a few paces with a kick of its foot.

Leia and Finn opened fire, but their shots seemed to absorb into the armor. Poe rolled over and grabbed his blaster from the grass before rolling back and aiming squarely into the creature’s face. He fired.

That did the trick.

“That thing had a translator!” Poe yelled as he scrambled back to his feet, brushing grass off of himself, “they’ve been planning this as an invasion, not just some accidental discovery.”

“There’s two more in here,” Finn yelled, his blaster trained on the remains of the cockpit.

At the front, one of the creatures was slumped down in its seat over what looked like the delicate roots of a plant. At the back, however, was one that seemed mostly unharmed, although Poe wondered for a moment if it was even the same species.

It was smaller, and Poe couldn’t find any large surgical scars on its body. Without the distortion of blended tissues, this one was easier to comprehend at a glance. It had a humanoid form with light greyish skin, a flat face, and deep-set pale eyes.

“Tell us what you are,” Leia commanded, pointing her blaster at the creature. It flinched back and ducked its head, saying nothing. “We know you can speak to us, so tell us what you are and what you’re doing here.”

The creature curled into a ball and remained silent. All of them stared at one another for a moment in uncertainty.

Just then they heard a wet, coughing noise, that eventually became a sticky, wheezing laugh. The creature at the front, presumably the pilot, had raised its head. Poe saw that it was covered with thick black blood that also seemed to be seeping out of its abdomen.

“You try to speak to a Shamed One,” the pilot laughed and then hacked a few times from the strain, “you would question a slave about the works of an Overlord. The Gods speak to no one whose body rejects Shaping.”

Immediately Leia turned to direct her blaster to the pilot.

“If you speak, then tell us what you are and why you’re here,” she said evenly.

“We are Yuuzhan Vong. We have come to save your galaxy from corruption and make a sacrifice of your suffering to the Gods,” the pilot spat, more black blood dripping from his mouth, “you will be purged of your machines and you will serve Yun-Yuuzhan with your pain.”

“What did you mean 'Shaping'?” Poe asked before Leia could continue. “You mean implanting all these other parts onto yourself?”

“Yuuzhan Vong will only Shape the living world. You strike at me with dead abominations of metal,” the pilot snarled at him, raising himself as far as he could from the seat, “but soon you will be purified. Your people will learn to serve the Gods and perhaps you may one day be Shaped as well if you are not so unclean that your body will not graft with the True Way.”

“You’re going to tell us about your fleet and your plans,” Leia said firmly, “or you’ll be meeting those Gods sooner than you’d like.”

The Yuuzhan Vong pilot laughed even harder this time.

“You cannot hope for victory. I am pledged to Overlord Shimrra and I pray for this release,” the Yuuzhan Vong gurgled. Then his head rolled back and he spasmed for a moment. Black blood foamed briefly over his teeth and then the jerking stopped and he went limp.

The slave Yuuzhan Vong sitting in the back of the cockpit immediately leapt out and took off running through the grass.

“General, should I fire?” Poe said, training his blaster on the retreating slave.

“No,” Leia said, “I don’t think… I don’t think it wants to cause us harm.”

Just then something came screaming down through the atmosphere above them. Poe looked up and saw that their period of being relatively unnoticed on the ground had come to a swift end. Another mid-sized Yuuzhan Vong ship was descending right towards them, accompanied by more fighters streaking across the sky above.

“Back to the Falcon!” Poe yelled over the sound and they all pelted back in the direction of the ship. The pilot must have been sending a signal while he’d distracted them because the ship was bearing down directly towards them. There was a bright flash of white and then the ground in front of them exploded.

Poe was thrown backwards and lay gasping for a second on the ground before he got his breath back. He was covered in rich dark soil and grass, but he could already smell the smoke and knew he had to run. They were cutting them off from the ship with the grass fires.

As he lurched back to his feet, he saw Rey dragging Leia upright while Finn was already up and trying to find a path through the smoke.

Before they could make another break, the larger ship landed and a panel in the front pulled open as the fibrous muscle structure relaxed. Inside were more heavily armored Yuuzhan Vong, each carrying one of the long serpentine whips. Ground troops.

“Get close!” Poe yelled through the smoke. They backed in towards one another, trying to shoot down as many Yuuzhan Vong as they could in the bottleneck before they had poured out of the transport ship.

“This is like fighting blind!” Rey shouted in frustration as she fired off a shot with her blaster before igniting her lightsaber again. “I can’t feel where they are!”

The Yuuzhan Vong hit them like a powerful wave. As many as they managed to shoot down with laser fire, more came rushing through. Poe ducked out of the way of another whip and soon found he had to resort to smashing one in the face with his elbow to gain enough distance to fire again. They wouldn’t last long like this.

And where were Rose and Chewie? Or even Lando? Surely they’d seen by now that they were in trouble, Poe thought, desperately glancing up as he reeled backwards to avoid another lash. From behind him a whip wrapped around his arm and he felt his skin tear open under it. Rey was trying to get to him, slashing the lightsaber to try to clear a path, but her blows were wild and unsteady.

The Yuuzhan Vong who had snared his arm jerked the whip and Poe sprawled down in front of him. He felt a heavy boot pressing down on his neck and he squeezed his eyes shut.

Just then a sudden cacophony of blaster fire rang out across the fields and the Yuuzhan Vong warrior that had been standing over him collapsed back into the grass. Poe rolled to a sitting position and kept firing. Yuuzhan Vong warriors were dropping all around them and more lasers flashed over their heads. Rey, Finn, and Leia had dropped to a crouch, but luckily their allies seemed to be aiming for the heads of the taller Yuuzhan Vong.

As the laser fire intensified, the Yuuzhan Vong finally began to break ranks and run into the smoking prairie to escape.

“Rose! Chewie! We’re down here!” Poe called through the smoke, peering in the direction of the lasers.

But what emerged from the smoke was not Rose or Chewie.

Several squadrons of trainee stormtroopers were marching towards them. They were armored for battle and had their blasters still raised as they advanced.

“Weapons down and hands over your head!” one of the stormtroopers shouted as they surrounded the weary little group. Poe flung his blaster down with more force than was necessary and then raised his hands. He’d risked all of their lives to save them, and this was how it paid off.  
The lead stormtrooper stepped forward, recognizable by a black panel on the upper part of the arm.

“Take the Resistance leaders into custody,” a cool female voice issued from beneath the helmet, “and make sure the Jedi girl is gagged. Let her know that her friends will die first if she tries to make a move.”

Finn stepped forward, his mouth agape and his eyes wide and shocked.

“It’s you,” he said, “but… how?”

“You must be the traitor,” the lead stormtrooper said, “I believe you met my predecessor.”

As the other trainee troopers moved forward to take their weapons and bind their hands, the lead stormtrooper pulled off her helmet.

She was tall, pale, with a short crop of white-blonde hair. Captain Phasma of the First Order. But approximately ten years younger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a big crazy chapter! So now the Yuuzhan Vong are out of the bag, how many of ya'll actually read those EU novels? I'm kind of trying to go the way of the Force Awakens where I take some inspiration from the EU continuity but I also change stuff so the story isn't identical. Also, Phasma is back because Gwendoline Christie is my main bitch and I want her to somehow still be in Episode IX. 
> 
> Please comment me your feelings and I'll shout my feelings back at ya.


	8. Blaze

Rose Tico leaned forward and gave the cuffs around her hands a firm tug against the trunk of the tree. No luck. She’d have to lose a thumb to get out of these, and the tree didn’t seem likely to move either. From a few feet behind her she heard Chewbacca groan as he regained consciousness. It had taken nearly half the squad of stormtroopers that had boarded the ship to subdue the wookie, while for Rose it was a humiliating two. Lando had, of course, surrendered as soon as they made it to the cockpit.

They were sitting now somewhere in the creekbed, slightly protected from the fires on the grasslands, but still close enough to smell smoke in the distance. The ground was rocky and damp, and the cover was more scratchy brush than mature forest, but at the very least no one was shooting at them.

A stormtrooper stood in front of her, hands clamped around his blaster. He was smaller than they usually were, she noticed, and jumpier.

“Hi there,” she called to him, “is there any chance you could let me move somewhere more comfortable? I’m sure you noticed I don’t walk so well and I could really use something softer to sit on.”

“No talking from prisoners,” the stormtrooper replied. His voice, even through the mask’s filter, was high pitched. Still a teenager she guessed.

“Look, it’s not like I’ll be running away anywhere,” Rose pleaded, “I can barely walk and besides, there’s a huge battle happening up there. I promise, we’re actually on the same side right now.”

“I can find you a log or some leaves or something,” the stormtrooper finally said, “but I’m not allowed to unlock the cuffs. You can ask the squad leader when she’s back.”

“Thank you,” Rose gushed with a sympathetic smile, preparing her good leg to kick his ankles out from under him as soon as he got close.

But her chance didn’t come. As soon as she’d spoken she heard the sound of more stormtroopers crashing towards them through the underbrush. Rose twisted her head over to see and her heart sank. General Organa, Commander Dameron, Finn, and even a heavily bound and gagged Rey were being marched towards them by a massive party of stormtroopers.

“Find an escape pod that’s still functional. We need to get a message to command that we’ve captured the Resistance leaders and the Jedi girl,” the squad leader ordered and Rose groaned as her guard turned to answer.

“I spotted one go down not far from here a minute ago,” he reported, “but not from our ship.”

“I don’t care where it came from, niner,” the squad leader replied, her tone severe but not angry, “just get me there.”

Meanwhile, the other stormtroopers had secured the prisoners to the surrounding trees. General Organa and Lando were somewhere behind her with Chewbacca while Finn and Poe were in front of her. Rey, they decided, should be secured upright to the largest tree to give her full view of all of her comrades should she try to run.

Rose sighed and leaned her head back against the tree. There was no way she could get away now without a fight. Behind her she could already hear General Organa and Lando Calrissian starting an argument.

“We should have left when we had the window,” Lando was hissing somewhere over her shoulder. “What good is your intel going to do us if we just get handed over to the First Order? We could be far away from these things by now, building something to let us ride this out.”

“I’ll take a shot at saving the entire galaxy over a well stocked bunker to die in any day. You didn’t even speak to them, Lando, they were calling themselves the Yuuzhan Vong. They said they were going to purify us,” Leia shot back. “You know I thought you’d changed. That Endor was you making a choice to be better. Now I can see it was just a fluke!”

“You think we were saving the galaxy at Endor, but look where we are now! We did this! Leia, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but we’re all directly responsible for what’s happening now!” Lando whispered angrily and Rose noticed Rey look up at that.

“Don’t you dare bring-” Leia began furiously, but Rose stopped paying attention as Finn and Poe decided to pick a separate fight right in front of her.

“I hope you’re happy we risked our lives for these First Order flunkies,” Poe grunted as he struggled for a second against his cuffs, “because we might have just destroyed the entire Resistance. Again.”

“Look, Poe, just don’t,” Finn snapped back, “whatever you say is going to make this worse.”

“They’re First Order stormtroopers,” Poe replied, unable to contain his anger, “and in case you’ve forgotten, this is a war. I don’t like it, I don’t enjoy it, but I have accepted that if we let stormtroopers live, they will kill thousands of people.”

“I cannot... I cannot take this anymore, everyday for months I have to listen to this sanctimonious political speech-making,” Finn growled, “and you’ve never once listened to me when I dare to suggest that spending my entire life as a First Order stormtrooper might let me understand some things you don’t!”

“Hey, cut it out!” Rose interjected, getting nervous as she saw a few stormtroopers glancing towards them. But neither Finn nor Poe seemed to be paying her any attention.

“Look, Finn, I’ve listened. I get it. You were a stormtrooper so you don’t want to kill the people who you used to know,” Poe sighed, rolling his eyes, “but then you made a choice. You chose to leave. And they didn’t. All of them could have made that choice, and they didn’t.”

“That’s exactly what you don’t want to understand,” Finn shot back, his voice cold and harsh now, “is that none of them had a choice. None of these stormtroopers chose the First Order. They were taken. They were brainwashed. This isn’t like the Empire. They aren’t even paid, Poe. What do you think happens, if you can somehow win and bring down the First Order? Do we have to execute them all? Does every single stormtrooper go to trial?”

“Seriously? Have this fight later!” Rose said in exasperation.

“Some of them will!” Poe said, struggling to shift himself around his tree to better scowl at Finn. Finn leaned forward to stare right into his eyes.

“Some of them could be like me,” Finn said icily, “and I wish you could understand that. Not as my commander, not as a Resistance pilot. I just need my friend to understand. I need a friend who cares enough to listen.”

“It isn’t- I’m not trying to be like that,” Poe said, deflating a little. His brow creased with worry.

“Then stop acting like my feelings are nothing but a liability to you,” Finn said, his anger evaporating into quiet.

“Hey, I would have voted to save them too,” Rose suggested. No luck. They were staring into each other’s eyes with an electric sort of single-mindedness.

Rose leaned back against her tree and blinked a few times to clear her mind. She found herself glancing at Rey, still bound and gagged. Around the gag, Rey half smiled at her, then jerked her head in the direction of Finn and Poe and rolled her eyes.

“No point trying to help them figure it out, huh?” Rose called over to her, and Rey shook her head adamantly. “Also, I didn’t really get the chance to thank you properly for saving me from the ship.”

Rey shrugged.

“I’m not sure you of all people would really understand this, but I’ve been feeling a little left behind recently,” Rose admitted. Immediately Rey began nodding as hard as she could as if to imply that she did indeed know exactly the feeling. “Well, at least you aren’t useless when you’re here. All I can do apparently is get people captured.”

Rey seemed to struggle for a moment with a way to respond to that. Then she squinted a little, and Rose saw a tiny twig lift off of the ground and start scratching in the dirt in front of her.

'I can’t fight without the Force.'

“I think by doing that you just proved yourself wrong,” Rose said, raising an eyebrow in Rey’s direction. “Just throw a giant stick at them, and you’re set.”

Rey choked a little as she tried to laugh through the gag.

“Listen, I need you to-” Rose whispered, glancing over her shoulder to make sure the nearest guard was distracted with the squabbling around her rather than listening in.

But as soon as she spoke, the squad leader came crashing back through the bushes, accompanied by someone else.

He was sweating, his red hair disheveled and coated in dried blood at the temple, and his long black coat was torn from the crash. General Hux of the First Order, looking extremely unhappy to be there.

“Listen, I evacuated the ship as per protocol, and as the highest ranking officer on the ground I will be taking charge of the situation,” he was saying as he followed the squad leader.

“You called my ship into a major battle! I had a transport ship full of trainees who’ve never seen combat and you sent them into a firefight with only basic defensive canons,” the squad leader snapped back. “And I will report it as so to the Supreme Leader.”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll be amenable to forgiving that oversight once he realizes I’ve caught him the Resistance general and the Jedi girl,” Hux replied coolly.

“My untrained sixteen year olds captured the Resistance general and the Jedi girl,” the squad leader said, “and while they hospitably host you in this half-covered ditch, you will make sure to remember that.”

“Do I know you?” Hux finally said, peering at the squad leader as though he could look through her helmet by squinting hard enough.

The squad leader reached up and pulled off her helmet. Rose let out an audible gasp. Hux groaned and rolled his eyes.

“I should have known. You’re one of that clone batch they did of Phasma. An ideal fighter they called her,” he deadpanned, “if they’d asked me I would have told them she was also an ideal little snake.”

“Whatever I have in common with my genetic donor,” the clone Phasma said without amusement, “it doesn’t extend to incompetence.”

“So that’s how she’s alive,” Finn said, finally distracted from his own argument by another. “Or I guess she’s not alive. She’s someone else.”

The clone Phasma turned to look at Finn with interest.

“You’re FN-2187,” she said with an arch of her eyebrow, “the traitor.”

“The traitor who just saved all of your lives by convincing my friends to shoot down those ships chasing you,” Finn said, pushing his chin out defiantly.

“You did save our lives. And I have treated you fairly, haven’t I?” the clone Phasma said, “if you do as I say, we’ll all get out of here and then you’ll face the appropriate legal ramifications for your actions.”

“Listen,” Leia suddenly broke in, “you think this is just happening here? We interrogated the pilot of that downed ship, you saw yourself how those creatures fight. This is happening everywhere. It’s not just your troops, it’s the whole galaxy at stake if you don’t let us get back to our ship.”

“You’re going to give us everything you know about those creatures, Organa, or else you’ll watch every member of your crew die, starting with the wookie,” General Hux broke in.

“Hey! Hey! Not the wookie!” Poe yelled and General Hux whirled on him. “I’ll talk!”

“So talk,” General Hux said, standing over Poe and tenderly brushing back his blood-encrusted hair.

“Look, you seem like you’re pretty high up in the First Order, like a Captain or something,” Poe said.

“A general,” Hux replied shortly.

“Well then you’re exactly the person who needs to know!” Poe exclaimed, “you’ve got a traitor in the high command!”

“What are you talking about?” Hux asked, squinting harder. Poe’s face was a perfect mask of naivety.

“When we talked to those creatures in the crashed ship, they told us they were secretly working for a First Order general,” Poe whispered conspiratorially. “A man named General Hux.”

Rose managed to disguise her massive snort of laughter as a sneeze.

“Phasma, or whatever the hell your name is now, have this man shot,” Hux commanded, turning his back on Poe.

“I’m sorry General, but I have to take even the wildest allegations seriously until they can be properly reviewed by my superior officer,” the Phasma clone replied, her face unreadably blank.

Rose lost it and started laughing so hard it hurt.

“We’ve got more incoming ground troops!” one of the stormtrooper trainees yelled, suddenly sprinting into the clearing.

“Use the comms and stay at your post,” the clone Phasma admonished him, and then immediately turned to the rest of her troops, “all of you keep guarding the prisoners. Use the cover as best as you can. Even if you’re lying in a bush you use that advantage for as long as possible!”

“We should move further down the stream,” Hux protested, “You won’t be able to fight them off here.”

“We have no idea what the terrain is like and for all we know they have another ship waiting for us to try to run,” the clone Phasma replied, “we hold the position until we get backup.”

“This is treason,” Hux fumed, but as he spoke the sound of blaster fire started again up the hill behind them. The clone Phasma immediately crouched down and set her own blaster up on top of a fallen log.

Rose strained over her shoulder to see what was happening. The other trainee stormtroopers were diving into the bushes and aiming their own blasters up the hill. A few screams echoed from somewhere behind them, undeniably human.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rose caught a glimpse of General Hux quietly slipping away towards the creek.

More screams issued from closer this time and Rose could hear the sound of people running through the thick brush.

“Let us help you!” Rose called desperately. The clone Phasma glanced towards her before returning to aiming up the hill. It was impossible not to associate her with the woman she’d so dismissively termed a genetic donor. The same cold efficiency but more impersonal.

“Look, you’ll have no prisoners to bring back unless you let us fight,” Finn added, “and you need some of us alive!”

The clone Phasma growled a little in frustration, and then took the key chip from her belt and crawled over to Finn and Poe.

“Get the others out and then stay down,” she snapped at them as she released them from their cuffs. Finn grabbed the key from her and then hurried over to release Rey from her bonds.

“I’ll need that lightsaber back if you want us to survive this,” Rey said immediately, wiping her tongue as soon as the gag was released.

Clone Phasma jerked her head towards a nearby crate where their weapons were stashed. Finn came and knelt in front of Rose to release her bonds. Neither of them seemed able to make eye contact for a moment, even as close as he had to get.

“Thank you,” Finn finally blurted out.

“What?” Rose said, pulling her hands out from behind her and shaking them a few times to get the blood going, “I mean, thank you?”

“No, thank you, for saving my life,” Finn said, flushing slightly, “I never got the chance to say it. I meant to, but… well I should have said it earlier.”

“You’re welcome,” Rose said, slowly pulling her injured leg up as she tried to stand. She could feel Finn’s concerned gaze on her as she braced herself against the tree and tried putting some weight on the leg. For some reason, she didn’t want him to see her, to see the way he’d left her. She bit the inside of her cheek hard and then walked as evenly as she could towards the weapons while Finn worried about getting General Organa and Lando Calrissian out of their cuffs.

“Here,” Rey said, seeming to sense her reluctance to walk and tossing her a blaster, “you want me to put you in a tree?”

“What? I mean, okay, but-” Rose said, but before she had finished speaking, Rey had hoisted her easily up to one of the larger tree’s bottom branches.

“I’ll grab you if we need to run okay?” Rey said, squatting down below her.

Rose goggled down at her in wonder. A real actual Jedi warrior had put her in a tree. With just the strength of her arms. Incredible.

Her attention was quickly diverted when a mass of stormtroopers came rushing down the hill towards them.

“Get cover and hold them here!” The clone Phasma yelled, replacing her helmet. Despite the chaos, the panicked stormtroopers listened for the most part and dove behind the trees alongside them. “Ready to fire!”

As soon as the last stormtrooper had cleared their line, the creatures Leia had called Yuuzhan Vong appeared in the brush. While Rose in general tried to stop herself from judging other species by her standards of beauty, these creatures were objectively and seemingly purposefully hideous.

“Now!”

All of them fired. The first wave of Yuuzhan Vong dropped as a few of the blasts found a mark in one of the chinks in their armor, but more rushed past them.

Rey stood up, her lips drawn into a snarl. She reached out her hand and then yanked it back towards herself.

With a massive cracking groan, a tree came crashing down. It took several of the Yuuzhan Vong with it, but Rey wasn’t finished.

She reached forward again and this time the massive log shot backwards up the hill, sending the warriors tumbling to the ground along with it.

The Yuuzhan Vong creatures all seemed to immediately shift their focus to Rey.

“Abomination,” one at the front growled through a thick mouth of teeth. “Shamed before the Gods.”

“While they’re down, forward!” the clone Phasma shouted to the stormtroopers, and as one they all surged forward.

Rose took the luxury of aiming carefully from her more stable position up in the tree and made sure each blast went straight for the face or neck. She could see Finn rushing up the hill with the pack of stormtroopers and Poe right beside him. General Organa was moving with deadly precision to take out all of the Yuuzhan Vong who’d fallen to the ground. Lando and Chewbacca had gone back to back as they fired relentlessly into the rushing panic of stumbling enemy combatants. And of course Rey was leading the charge, lightsaber drawn as she flung half of the forest down onto their heads.

The tide of the battle seemed to change now. While there were still Yuuzhan Vong warriors pouring down the hill, they weren’t overwhelming them. In fact, they were close to routing them when Rose heard the engines breaking through the atmosphere above them.

She squinted up through the branches of the tree.

One of the brand new Resistance corvettes was descending towards them. And even more remarkable, so was a First Order cruiser. All across the sky, Rose could spot First Order destroyers and Resistance cruisers jumping above the planet.

Whatever had been happening up there, Rose thought as she felt a wave of relief flooding only slightly prematurely over her, they’d at least been able to fend it off for now.

“Time to go!” Rey suddenly shouted from below her and Rose felt herself levitate gently down from the tree. It sent a thrill up her spine every time.

“Let’s get back to the Falcon before they capture us again!”

“I don’t think I can run well enough,” Rose admitted, not wanting to oversell herself again.

Rey hoisted Rose’s arm over her shoulder. And together they followed their friends up through the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I really enjoy imagining new ways for the gang to punk Hux so this was a real treat for me. 
> 
> Oh ye bold and courageous commenters: please interact. Oh ye respectable and pure-hearted kudos: please also interact.


	9. Torch

It took the whole Resistance convoy a full twelve hour cycle to make it back to their only remaining base. Rey took the opportunity to fit in a well-deserved nap for most of it. As Captain Millham informed them upon arrival, it had only been a short time before they’d also been forced to abandon Selvaris base, but having already loaded into the ships in case they were called in for backup, they jumped as soon as they saw Yuuzhan Vong ships in orbit. Admiral Vulwuakk hadn’t gotten away as easily when fighting started along the trade routes, and a few of his newly constructed ships hadn’t made it out in time.

As far as they could tell, their combined assault with the First Order around what was left of the Finalizer had eventually damaged the Yuuzhan Vong ships badly enough that they’d fled. It was difficult, however, to call it victory.

As soon as they landed on Eskora base, tucked far out in the Cadavine Sector away from the fighting elsewhere, they were flooded with news.

Rey had seen the base here briefly before when she’d still been out searching for Jedi secrets. It was set deep inside a gaseous planet and made up of a shifting network of ships all temporarily fitted together. Easy to hide. And easy to run should they have to. Outside, the indigo haze stirred as more and more ships kept coming in to join the base. Stragglers would continue to arrive for a while as more and more pilots found their way back from rendezvous points.

The news, they discovered, was bleak. From what their spies and surveillance droids could tell, the Yuuzhan Vong now effectively occupied most of the upper quadrants of the galaxy. The First Order had beaten them back at the Hydian Way, but the rest of the hyperspace routes were blockaded now by Yuuzhan Vong ships and from what they could tell, the First Order defenses had taken heavy losses. Although after the initial assault the invaders now seemed primarily concerned with butchering most of the inhabited planets in their domain and melting down anything technological to an inert lump, it was clear that they were going to try for the Core worlds eventually.

Rey felt foggy and listless back at the base. It was something like the jarring lurch she’d felt when Starkiller Base had fired on the Hosnian System. But this was slower, longer. She was constantly on edge, and at the same time weighted down with a sort of deep fatigue. Unlike hearing a shriek piercing through the galaxy, she was paralyzed as a dull, numb quiet settled over them.

General Organa had called together a large meeting as soon as most of the remaining Resistance ships that seemed likely to have made it were present. Rey had to admit, even given the circumstances, it was nice to see some familiar faces.

The central hub of Eskora base was laid out as a round control center with rows of seating that Rey supposed must be something like the senate of the Old Republic. She spotted a few familiar faces in the crowd. Jessika Pava was still there running the base’s defense. Rey spotted the familiar form of Nien Nunb who’d been smuggling credits out of the Core worlds for building new ships. And of course, down in the center of it all were R2-D2 and C-3PO.

“We seem to be destined to meet only in the most unfortunate of circumstances,” C-3PO said to her morosely by way of greeting as she took a seat beside Chewbacca.

“Hey threepio, have you ever considered that it might be your bad luck that keeps bringing us down?” Finn asked the droid, taking the seat next to her.

“Master Finn, I have endeavored to spend my time quietly and properly, while you and your friends have always broken with protocol,” C-3PO responded haughtily, “which would put the odds of my being the cause at-”

R2 cut him off with a whirring sequence of beeping.

“I have not been dragging you into trouble your whole life,” C-3PO replied indignantly, “in fact, quite the opposite.”

Just then, General Organa swept into the room. She had shed her raincoats and fatigues for a sober dark blue coat, buttoned and lined with bright gold.

“Welcome,” she said by way of beginning the meeting, “you all understand perhaps just a little of what we’re up against. We have come to a crossroads. The Resistance cannot continue as we have before. And this is not a choice I can make alone, so I have brought you here to decide with me.”

The room fell into a tense silence. Rey scanned the crowd. Poe sat across from them, head rested on his hands and seemingly caught up in his own thoughts. Rose had made it in on her mostly recuperated leg and she sat with her fellow mechanics. Even Lando was skulking near the door, curious but wanting to make it clear that he didn’t support the endeavor.

“We have been able to collect only limited data,” C-3PO reported to the room, “the Yuuzhan Vong fleet has been destroying anything mechanical in the sectors they control so our communications have been failing over the last day. From what we can tell they are a species originating from outside of the galaxy who use only living biotechnology genetically manipulated to allow them to operate at a comparably advanced level to the species of our Core systems. Of particular note are their weapons. They appear to be using organisms to superheat materials to a plasma state which give them a distinct advantages against deflector shields. Our best guess as to their number is that they at least rival the First Order in ships and far exceed them in destructive potential.”

“The Yuuzhan Vong will attempt to subjugate the entire galaxy. And it is doubtful that the First Order will repel them,” Leia summed up the matter, “we do not know much about the culture of these Yuuzhan Vong except that they have some sort of leader as determined by caste and they worship Gods that demand the pain of all sentient beings. And as Rey has told us… they are not connected to us through the Force. Our choice becomes this: do we run and preserve ourselves, do we try to fight, or do we join with the First Order?”

The very words sent a ripple of anger through the assembled leadership.

“You might as well be asking me to jump into a TIE fighter,” Jessika Pava said fiercely. “I won’t let the Resistance end by tolerating an enemy that destroys entire systems as the lesser of two evils.”

“How do we know that if we offer our help, they won’t immediately betray us?” Lieutenant D’Arcy asked. “We could be handing over our lives for nothing.”

“So you’d rather run?” Finn yelled, leaping to his feet. “Trust me, I see the irony here. But I promise you, running never works.”

“We can still fight the Yuuzhan Vong without resorting to the First Order,” Admiral Vulwuakk protested. The Resistance trusted the old Bothan and already a few were starting to nod in agreement. “Perhaps we have no way to win on our own, but if we let them destroy one another, we might be able to finish off the Yuuzhan Vong who remain. We should build our forces, prepare a fleet while we have time.”

“The Yuuzhan Vong are out there now. They’re killing people now!” Rose piped up, “are we fighting for them or are we just fighting to destroy the First Order?”

Rey tried to keep her mind focused on the debate. She didn’t even know what she wanted at this point except to be able to reach out and feel the Force whole and unbroken again without the shadow of the Yuuzhan Vong.

“We have to save those people,” Poe finally said, breaking his own long silence, “we have to save as many as we can. But if we join with the First Order, we’re still doing evil work. Even if we can beat the Yuuzhan Vong, the Resistance will be over after that. There won’t be anything stopping Supreme Leader Ren from burning the whole galaxy. If we run, we lose. If we join, we still lose.”

Rey knew everyone was waiting for her to say something now. As a Jedi warrior. As their hero. Whatever she said, they would likely listen.

“I think…” she said slowly, “I think we should take some time. To search our feelings and contemplate what is… right.”

Leia cast her a concerned glance, but then nodded.

“We will reconvene tomorrow. Sleep on it and consider every possible alternative.”

Rey stood up and walked quickly out of the room. She could hear Finn somewhere behind her calling her name, but she didn’t stop.

Finn, who came back for her. Who helped her fly away from Jakku and into all of this. Her confidante and the only person she felt normal with when everyone else treated her as superhuman. And yet.

And yet the person she really wanted to talk to right now was a murderer across the galaxy who sometimes lived in her head.

She jogged back down the corridor out of the central hub and let her feet carry her back to the Millennium Falcon. She sat in the pilot’s seat and stared out into the vibrant mist of Eskora. Think, she told herself firmly, make a plan. She was far from helpless. She had power others would dream of possessing. And she had no idea what to do.

She buried her head in her arms and squeezed her fingernails into her shoulders until it hurt. Why couldn’t she just know what to do? How to fix the problems? What was the point of pretending to the Resistance she was a real Jedi and she could help them when she couldn’t do anything? She could build a laser sword. But what else? What else?

Breathe, a quiet voice said inside of her. Just breathe.

Rey closed her eyes. Don’t go straight to the dark. The answer doesn’t lie there. Everything you need is already inside you.

She felt a tear slip slowly down her cheek. Her eyes wanted to open, to see if Luke would really be there if she did, but, she realized, she didn’t need to. She felt him there. For the first time in weeks she felt peace.

And suddenly she felt the Force around her. She felt herself connected to each ship in their vast network and she felt outside the energy of the swirling mists of Eskora. Only thin panels of metal separated each living creature from that poisonous fog. Life. Death. Balance.

“Rey?” a soft voice said from the doorway and Rey opened her eyes. General Organa stood in the doorway, her face softer and sadder than she usually let it be. “Was… was someone here?”

“Yes,” Rey said with a smile, “I think he was.”

Leia reached out and squeezed the back of the co-pilot’s seat tightly for a moment as if it were the only thing holding her up.

“I’m sorry, I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Leia said and then looked around the cockpit. “I’ll leave you.”

“No, please stay,” Rey said and then took a deep breath, “I need to tell you something.”

Leia sat down next to her in the co-pilot’s seat. Rey could feel her strength radiating out from every direction. She wondered if the general even knew how much she was already unconsciously immersed in the Force.

“I have a connection through the Force… with you son,” Rey said slowly, “sometimes I see him or I feel what he’s feeling. It started while I was training with Luke and I tried to… cut it off after Snoke. But for some reason I still have it, and I’m starting to think maybe that’s important.”

“Is he…” Leia began, and then her voice broke. She cleared her throat. “How is the Supreme Leader coping with the invasion?”

“General, what I’m trying to say is I think our connection means something. That the Force is connecting us for a reason,” Rey said adamantly, “because that’s the whole point right? We’re connected to everything, even the darkness. But the Yuuzhan Vong have been severed from the Force. And I think my job is… my job is not to fight the darkness, but to restore the Force.”

“How do you even begin to do that?” Leia asked. “How do you and… him fix the Force itself?”

“I don’t know yet,” Rey said, “but I understand my place. I can’t run from the Yuuzhan Vong. I have to reach out.”

She took a deep breath and took Leia by the hand. She opened herself as completely as she could, but this time breathing peacefully. Not using her fear or her anger. She just reached.

And somehow, she still found him.

One of his eyes was bloodshot. He looked exhausted, he probably hadn’t slept since the invasion began. She watched him as he scanned some screen she couldn’t see, deep in concentration. Very slowly, his eyes finally focused on her.

“Something’s different this time,” he noticed immediately with suspicion.

Rey took a few steps forward, keeping one hand still firmly holding onto Leia’s. Then very gently she reached her other hand up and softly touched the side of his face.

He recoiled like she’d slapped him.

“Stop it,” he said roughly, “get out.”

“I need you to help me,” Rey said, “Please.”

She left her hand extended. He stared down at it. For a second, his hand twitched. Then his face morphed into a snarl.

“You’re with her,” he realized, shaking his head.

And with that he was gone.

Leia’s hand in hers was trembling. Rey looked over and saw that tears were running down her face. She leaned forward and folded the general into a hug.

“I can’t promise you that I’ll bring balance to the Force,” Rey said into her shoulder, “but I will save it.”

Leia said nothing, but she clung tightly to Rey for another few minutes.

***

Rose sat down in the engineering bay of their largest cruiser Admiral Vulwuakk had managed to escape with. Her leg were stretched out as she sat on the floor and immersed herself in the deflector shields system. She had no idea what she was doing, of course, but she was at least doing something. She would find a way to be useful no matter what.

“They all forget about you and you’re still down here working,” a voice said from behind her and she jumped, banging her head against a compressor dial as she turned to look.

Lando Calrissian was standing behind her, surveying the mess she was making of the shield systems. He was dressed in the borrowed outfit of a Resistance ground tech, which was drastically at odds with his behavior.

“There’s an entire team of mechanics down here working,” Rose snapped at him, “and if you aren’t here to help me get our shields to work against molten rock then don’t bother me.”

“Listen, it’s Rose right?” Lando sighed, crouching down so he was eye level with her. “I know your type. You’ve got the real compassion underneath all the bombast. Might not be the most remarkable, but the way I see, you’re more important than any of them.”

“Are you trying to say that I’m just like you?” Rose sighed irritably. Lando let out a surprised laugh.

“Of course not! Totally the opposite,” he snorted, “I’m the guy who betrays his friends and then saves them again just for the drama. The only thing we’ve got in common is that no one thinks I matter either. Trouble is, they’re actually right about me.”

“So why come down here and bother me?” Rose said, grabbing another wrench and returning back to her work.

“Believe it or not, I really am just trying to keep my people safe,” Lando shrugged, “and I’m not bad at fixing ships.”

“Well I’m not fixing it,” Rose grunted, “I’m trying to make it do something impossible.”

“I’ve got something perfect for that,” Lando said, pulling out a flask and taking a sip. He handed it to her and she accepted cautiously. As soon as it touched her throat she felt herself coughing.

“That’s very strong,” she said in a hoarse voice.

“Can’t hurt at this point, huh?” Lando said with a wink and then sat down cross legged on the floor beside her and gazed up at the massive shield system. “A little liquid courage.”

Rose unexpectedly felt herself start to cry.

“Oh no, I’m sorry about this,” she sniffled, “but I’m so afraid of what’s been happening. And I feel… broken.”

“Ah,” Lando said uncomfortably, “I didn’t mean to upset you. Seriously, nothing about you is broken. Plenty of folks lose a piece here or there.”

“I’m not just talking about my stupid leg,” Rose bawled, “I’m talking about losing my sister. Losing half of the Resistance because of a stupid plan I thought I could handle. And it might just mean nothing because intergalactic invaders are going to wipe us out. The type of broken that doesn’t just heal with some time. Broken like I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

“Broken…” Lando said slowly.

Rose’s crying stopped as quickly as it had started.

“Wait,” she said.

“What?” Lando asked eagerly. Rose wiped her face roughly and then gazed up into the deflector shield systems.

“I just thought of something really stupid,” Rose said, a grin starting to spread across her face, “but potentially brilliant.”

“Wha- oh!” Lando said, catching on. “You’re going to break it!”

“I’m going to break the shield systems,” Rose nodded, “just a little. Just enough to get some pretty bad distortion. It’ll fly like a wreck… but….”

“It’s not going to deflect,” Lando said gleefully, “it’s going to slow down those plasma blasts until they’re nothing but hot rocks!”

“If it works,” Rose cautioned him. “If they approve my plan.”

“Rose,” Lando announced, passing her the flask again, “the Resistance does not deserve you.

***

Finn stood in the hallway as the echoes of Rey’s retreating footsteps died away.

“Come on,” he said in frustration. He stood for a moment considering what to do. As he hesitated, something hard slammed into the back of his calves sending him staggering forward.

“Hey BB-8, don’t bother Finn right now,” Poe chided from behind him, “get down to maintenance or something.”

The droid burbled innocently and rolled away.

Finn turned and saw Poe standing behind him, trying to skulk away with the rest of the officers leaving the meeting.

“That’s all you have to say?” Finn blurted out to his own surprise. Poe stopped.

“Look, buddy, I don’t want to fight with you,” Poe said quietly, “we don’t see eye to eye on this, but I don’t think you’re evil or anything. Can we just go back to being friends? Like when I met you we were on different sides, but it was so easy to just be friends.”

“Well maybe it can’t just be easy anymore,” Finn said. He had no idea why he was acting this way when he knew he could shut up and go back to his room and in a few weeks once his temper had cooled they really could go back to just being friends. Laughing over Poe’s jokes and reminiscing over missions.

“I get it, okay?” Poe said, finally becoming frustrated. He took a step closer until they were both standing in front of the doorway. “You think I’m heartless. That I’m more interested in blowing up the First Order than saving people.”

“I know you aren’t,” Finn replied, “because we saved those Phyleins. Remember? You did that!”

“Well, I’ll save Phyleins with you any day,” Poe said, his voice rising. Finn was entranced for a moment by a single lock of hair that had fallen down over his eye. “But I’m not going to save the First Order.”

“You think I’m too sympathetic to them,” Finn said, stepping even closer and put as much poison into his words as he could muster, “when I have more reason than anyone here to hate them.”

“I think you’re too kind to be fighting a war!” Poe shouted back, “and war is horrible and I hate it and I wish you never had to!”

“Well I think you care so much about protecting your people,” Finn yelled, “that you don’t spare enough time to care about yourself!”

“Sometimes I wish you weren’t so… good!” Poe bellowed at him and stepped forward. Finn stumbled backwards into the wall.

“Well I wish you’d stop torturing yourself for not measuring up to your own impossible standards!” Finn howled back, “because you’re amazing!”

And then suddenly, unexpectedly, and without any clear cause or reason, Finn felt their mouths slam together.

At first it was confusing and somewhat painful, but then he felt Poe’s arms clutching at the back of his jacket and he felt his own hands reaching up to thread his fingers through the other man’s dark curls and pull him closer. His face was burning hot, and he let his lips open slightly. They were gripping each other frantically, kissing so hard he couldn’t even breathe.

Then as fast as it had happened, they both staggered backwards and broke apart. Poe’s face was flushed, his lips wet, and his pupils wide. His hair was ruffled and fell into his face as he took a few unsteady steps back.

Finn felt himself gasping for air. His hands felt shaky and numb and his lips tingled slightly. Neither of them had any idea what to say or do.

In almost perfect unison they both decided on the easiest option, turned tail, and ran in opposite directions down the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's time to BRING THE PATHOS. Unleash those emotion. Have more tense fights about ethics. All my favorite things. 
> 
> I've been really looking forward to getting this chapter for a while and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Comment now or you lose your sacred honor.


	10. Burned

The next morning as the Resistance filed back in to the central hub, Rey took a place standing at the center instead of sitting on the sides. Finn and Poe took seats carefully across the room from one another and Rey narrowed her eyes a little as she tried to get a read on what exactly was happening there. Surely not still the same fight? Both of them were too sheepish and quiet for that now.

Rose also was sitting up at the front this time and beside her was, to Rey’s mild surprise, Lando Calrissian. Rose looked tired and some of her hair was sticking up where she’d apparently caught a few hours of sleep on a blanket in the engine rooms, but she also seemed happier than she’d been in days.

“Now that we’ve all had time to consider the possibilities,” General Organa began the meeting, “it is time for us to decide what role the Resistance will play in the war against the Yuuzhan Vong.”

Rey stepped up to speak first, wanting to say her piece early and clear the air from yesterday.

“I have no right to decide what is best for the Resistance,” she began, “but I am the only one remaining who can decide the course of the Jedi Order. The Jedi of old were tasked with bringing peace and balance to the galaxy, but I am… I am something different. I wasn’t trained like they were. I don’t even understand most of their history. And so I cannot make their purpose my own. My responsibility is to protect the Force and everything that it encompasses. The Yuuzhan Vong pose perhaps the greatest threat ever mounted against the Force itself, and I will fight alongside any other beings who seek to end that threat. So for my part, I will fight with the First Order, with the Resistance, and with anyone else willing to get in a ship or pick up a blaster.”

After she had said her piece, the room was uncharacteristically free of chatter. A few of the looks that fell upon her were cold.

“I agree with Rey,” Rose said after a short pause, “we should be more concerned with saving the galaxy today than gaining some imaginary advantage over an enemy tomorrow. And I might have a way we can actually help fight the Yuuzhan Vong. If we alter our deflector shields systems substantially, we could create enough distortion to neutralize their plasma cannons, although we’d leave ourselves open to laser fire.”

“We have to share that with the First Order,” Finn cut in, “even if we don’t lend them our ships, we at least need to give them a chance against the Yuuzhan Vong.”

“But if we let the First Order win this war without us, using our tech,” Admiral Vulwuakk protested, “the people will turn to them as saviors after the war!”

“I have an idea,” Poe said, unexpectedly. His voice seemed to quiet some of the most dissatisfied Resistance members who resented the idea of handing anything over to a group that had been hunting and killing them for years.

Poe moved to the center of the room and pulled up one of the largest navigational maps of the galaxy.

“The Yuuzhan Vong entered our galaxy from the Unknown Regions, Lando has told us that much. From what he saw they have some sort of base out there where they started the invasion,” Poe said, gesturing towards the region and letting the map zoom in on the approximate area, “if we can hit their base, find where they’re vulnerable, we might stop them from pushing down into the Core worlds before we have the time to mount a better defense.”

“You’re proposing a suicide mission,” Lando balked, “you’ll never bring enough Resistance ships through the Unknown Regions without being noticed.”

“Which is why… I agree with Finn,” Poe said, taking a deep breath. A few of the other pilots shuffled and stirred a little at that. “We need to give the First Order Rose’s shield idea. But not as a gift. We need to negotiate. No one in the galaxy has better charts of the Unknown Regions than the First Order. If we get them to back our plan and get us in, then we might be able to throw the Yuuzhan Vong into enough chaos that we can drive them out without a full war.”

“All in favor of Commander Dameron’s plan,” Leia asked the room. A few hands began to hesitantly go up. Then a few more. Rey raised her hand for what it was worth. She noticed Finn had too although he was keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the ground in front of him. Strange behavior.

“I won’t like it,” Admiral Vulwuaak finally said, “it’s bad odds and bad luck. But it’s the best I’ve heard so far.”

“We’re the rebels, Admiral,” Leia said with a smirk, raising her own hand, “we thrive on bad odds and bad luck.”

And with that the rest of the Resistance seemed to follow suit.

“General Organa,” Poe said, turning immediately to address Leia, “as this is my plan I’d like to volunteer myself as the Resistance representative to the First Order.”

“Very well, Dameron,” Leia sighed, “but you’ll need backup.”

“He’ll have me,” Rey said, stepping forward, “the only living Jedi should be present at this sort of thing, right?”

“I’d like to volunteer as well,” Finn blurted out, also jumping up, “I know the First Order best, just in case they don’t like the terms and we need a quick escape.”

The three of them stood and faced the general and the room full of Resistance leaders behind her.

“Then you are granted the authority to offer these terms,” Leia said, “and we will stand behind you should you need us.”

Rey glanced over at Finn on her right and Poe on her left. Just the three of them walking blindly into the heart of the First Order. Well, she thought to herself, it might go better than the last time she’d tried it.

She looked out over the room of Resistance fighters and hoped with everything she had that this wasn’t a terrible mistake.

 

***

General Hux’s toes squeaked a little against the ground as he kicked feebly in the air. His throat made a few unpleasant sucking rasps and Supreme Leader Kylo Ren had to resist the overwhelming urge to just crush his windpipe and be done with him. It wouldn’t be a great loss, he thought temptingly, and if he didn’t do it now he was almost certain the man would eventually try to kill him again.

“So you found the Resistance leadership, and then you lost them? You discovered an enemy fleet, and you damaged nearly every ship in the quadrant? And of course, you somehow won your pyrrhic victory from an escape pod on the ground?” Kylo Ren said in a brittle, dangerous voice. “General, if these are your successes, I don’t think the First Order will survive your failures.”

Hux didn’t appear to be listening closely as he was turning a ruddy purple. Disgusted, Kylo Ren released his grip and let the man crumple to the floor and retch for a few seconds.

The rest of the High Command who were assembled now in the throne room looked carefully elsewhere, faintly embarrassed and, tantalizingly, a little unnerved. The mood in the room was stifling and he felt desperate to send them all away so he could have some time with his thoughts.

The First Order was failing. Their armies were not enough. Panic spread like an infection through the ranks and reflected back from the citizens of the planets, now loyal only out of desperation. Already the people on Coruscant were rioting, begging for better protection at the cost of their further flung neighbors. It was disgusting.

Every piece of intel his High Command brought to him was doom and destruction. The upper sectors were being slaughtered. The creatures had been tortured and dissected, but all they could get from them was the same speech. The Yuuzhan Vong would cleanse and purify the galaxy. They must give up their machines and submit to the god of suffering. He could not see inside their minds and find out the truth of it all. He could barely even make himself look at them. Not so much because of their self-mutilation and studied distortion, but because they felt like nothing but empty void.

“Supreme Leader,” a firm female voice addressed him as Hux finished his coughing fit, “I should state that both the capture and the escape of the Resistance leadership and the Jedi girl occurred under my orders. After the loss of our ship, I was forced to use partially trained troops to engage combatants and serve as guards, and when we were attacked I made the decision to release the prisoners rather than have us all killed.”

The woman who had spoken was one of the Phasma clone experiment batch. She’d been previously confined to the training school although she’d been climbing the ranks. He had some notion of a long string of numbers that was her technical name, but she’d been given the designation PH-Alius once she’d made Lieutenant.

“It seems like no one here is understanding me,” Kylo Ren said and then he stood up and switched on his lightsaber. He felt the rest of the officers recoil at the sight. With one massive swing he cleaved through the pointless prop of a throne and let it slide smoothly apart onto the floor, “I don’t care about protocol. I don’t care about the chain of command. I care that you’re losing my ships!”

“Supreme Leader,” General Avadear said as soon as his shout had finished ringing through the room, “the number of ships in the fleet is inconsequential if we still remain unable to shield our larger vessels from Yuuzhan Vong technology. Point defenses can at least damage them, but at the current rate, we’ll be unable to hold even the Core worlds in a matter of weeks. We need intelligence. We need time. I propose a gradual tactical retreat from all upper sectors.”

“If we retreat, they fence us in. They corner and surround us,” Kylo Ren shot back. Snoke must have had a plan, he thought. If he’d only asked. If he only knew where to look. He felt his face burning with humiliation and frustration as he considered his options. Cornered and pinned down and made helpless and then finally, extinguished. He rubbed his scabbing burned hand beneath the glove, driving his thumb into the tender palm until he could feel it starting to bleed again.

“The rebels…” General Hux finally managed to pant from the floor, his face livid and almost spiteful. The man was unbreakable. “They said they’d interrogated a Yuuzhan Vong pilot. So perhaps the Supreme Leader ought to consider that he still has other enemies… who might be better armed than he thinks.”

The implied threat was so bold it struck him as almost pathetic. And yet for some reason it stung. Still unable to get control of his generals. Still unable to command real respect.

His thoughts felt frantic. His injured hand wouldn’t stop shaking. Snoke had been right. He was too weak to lead. Destined to be ever the apprentice while Luke Skywalker took with him the last of the power of their bloodline. He could feel himself cracking up.

They were interrupted by the door swinging open to reveal a large squadron of stormtroopers led by Captain Dorian, Phasma’s recent replacement.

“Supreme Leader,” the captain said and gave a short nod of submission. “We just recovered a shuttle lost over the Yavin system.”

“We lost Captain Tanaquil’s transport there, right?” General Jethnea inquired.

“Narja Ren was aboard that ship,” General Avadear said, quietly implying the true significance of the loss. “Along with several Force sensitive children being brought from the outer rim.”

Kylo Ren froze. He could feel it before he even saw it.

“We recovered Narja Ren’s body, Supreme Leader,” Captain Dorian reported, “several parts were… missing. And there was also this.”

The squad of stormtroopers shifted to reveal the form of a young child, a human girl, hanging limply by her arms. He felt his stomach shift and drop and he was afraid for a moment he might be sick.

“A dead child?” General Hux asked, his face wrinkling with disgust. Kylo Ren stepped forward and shouldered past Hux without a second glance. He knelt down in front of the child and tried to keep himself from trembling.

The girl’s head lolled back when one of the stormtrooper’s jerked her arm. Her eyes were open, but unfocused, staring up at nothing. Along the temples, Kylo Ren could see a pair of recently sutured cuts, almost hidden by the dark curls that were stuck against her face with sweat.

“I have a message,” the girl said, suddenly opening her mouth and speaking in a hoarse voice. Her eyes stayed fixed up on some vague point far away and from one of them, a single tear slipped out and down her face, “I have a message for those like me who could wield the ungodly power.”

He wanted to recoil, but he couldn’t. He pressed his lips together to keep them from shaking and his throat felt swollen.

“The power I had was against the will of the gods who cut us free from our world. Surrender to Yun-Ne’Shel and be remade as I have been. Renounce the rule of machines and renounce the ungodly power and all those who have been shamed by it will be corrected,” the girl said faintly, and then went silent.

Kylo Ren squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and let his hair fall over his face to disguise his panic. He wished for the anonymity of a mask. The girl had been strong with the Force once, but now… there was nothing there. Like the Yuuzhan Vong, she had been severed. They had ripped it out of her.

“Take her away,” he said, standing up and turning his back on the High Command. He waited until the stormtroopers had dragged the girl out before he looked back.

After a scan of his generals faces he knew already how much damage had just been done. He’d only managed to pacify them with a combination of the empire’s precedent for trusting in the leadership of the Sith and their own fear of his abilities, but that was all about to shift. Anger welled up in him like burning venom. Let them all burn, then. Anyone could be replaced.

“This is perhaps advantageous,” General Avadear announced before he could act, “they’ve handed us a tool to stall for time.”

Kylo Ren reached out his hand, but the man barely flinched.

“Supreme Leader, I am only thinking of the security of the First Order,” the General said slowly, “those children you’ve been collecting are more valuable to us as bargaining chips now than they are as soldiers yet. After all, wasn’t it a Sith lord in the end who brought about the fall of the empire? Our strength lies in our fleet, not in some army of magical children.”

Regret was a strange thing. He knew he ought to be concerned, ought to be thinking carefully before he acted. The First Order High Command was a pit of vipers after all. He ought to be smart about this.

And yet he felt nothing like regret as he slammed all of them against the ground before stalking out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all know that as much as I enjoy the lovable Resistance buddies being heroic and precious, I also get a perverse kick out of writing these scenes where the First Order is just being a horrible trash fire. So in the next chapter it should be a trip to see them finally collide! 
> 
> Comment and I will stalk all of your stories and return the favor (because sharing our feelings is what fanfic is all about??)


	11. Conflagration

The Millenium Falcon drifted in space for a few moments as the hyperspace drive slowly wound down. Rey couldn’t help but stare. She’d never seen the Core before, but on Jakku she’d heard stories from trading ships moving in and out. It was somewhat spectacular to see the sky so bright around her as the planets here were so close they lit up the void with hundreds of lights. And the traffic as well, it was amazing. She’d never seen so many ships darting around a single planet at one time.

Visible as a bright globe ahead of them was Coruscant surrounded by ring upon ring of ships. First Order patrols were everywhere here. More destroyers than she’d ever seen before were congregating as they pulled out of the upper sectors and got ready to defend the Core when the strike came.

And directly up ahead she spotted a Dreadnaught class ship. She didn’t have to know its name. She could feel his presence on board. It was smaller than the Supremacy, but then again, the First Order no longer needed a mobile base as they spread themselves across the planets and moons of the Core. Were it not for a few obvious repairs in progress, Rey thought, the ship would have been utterly terrifying.

Almost immediately after they came out of hyperspace, First Order ships were flanking them on every side.

“This is the Millenium Falcon,” Rey said firmly into her headset before they had the chance to fire on her, “we surrender to First Order custody and request to land on the Incinerator.”

“Keep your engines off and lower your shields,” a voice filtered over the headset a moment later. “We’re pulling you in.”

Rey cast a glance towards Finn and Poe who were beside her in the cockpit. All three of them couldn’t help but wince a little as they felt the tractor beam lock on to the them and jolt the ship forward.

“Well, they haven’t immediately killed us, so this is already better than some of our predictions,” Poe said with a shrug.

“I don’t mind giving myself up,” Rey said, placing one hand tenderly on the controls, “but the Falcon? If they even touch her…”

“If a single stormtrooper enters this thing, it’ll just explode or vent poison gas or something. You’ve got to fly a ship like this with a healthy respect and fear of death,” Finn shrugged, and then looked somewhat suspiciously around the cockpit, “...which I definitely have.”

As they drew closer to the Incinerator they all became suddenly aware of its massive size. Even with a few sectors swarming with repair droids, every other inch of it was lethal. The Millenium Falcon became nothing but a speck of grey against it. The dreadnaught opened a pair of bay doors and then they were swallowed into a massive hanger where ground troops were already assembling to meet them.

“This is it,” Rey said taking a deep breath.

“The last time I was in one of these things with Kylo Ren…” Poe said staring up at the hanger. “It was not a happy time.”

“Hey, I got you out,” Finn protested.

“Bumpy ride, though,” Poe quipped back.

“This is really fun, you two, but could we please concentrate,” Rey said.

The door of the Millenium Falcon slowly lowered, and the three of them stepped out, arms raised. Rey wished for the comforting weight of her lightsaber at her side or at least her staff slung across her back. Stormtroopers surrounded them on every side, blasters all trained at them.

“We’re here to negotiate with your Supreme Leader,” Poe announced.

The stormtroopers did not respond. The three of them shifted a little uncomfortably.

“You know the guy, wears a lot of black, very grumpy,” Poe said again a little louder, “we’d like to talk to him so maybe buzz him down here or something.”

Finally an officer pushed his way through the crowd of stormtroopers. He was High Command, Rey thought, an older man with a rugged, lean face.

“You must be the girl, the Jedi in training,” the man said, addressing her rather than Poe. “I believe you’re expected. Your companions, well, perhaps I should send them to wait in a cell.”

“You can take all of us to speak to the High Command,” Rey replied, speaking words resonating with the Force, “or you’ll never find out what we’re here to offer.”

The officer shook his head for a moment like waving away an insect. He was sound minded, at least.

“And what exactly are you here to offer?” he asked.

“The Resistance is prepared to negotiate an alliance with the First Order against the Yuuzhan Vong,” Poe said, “and the tech you need to beat them.”

The officer sighed and smiled coldly at them.

“Very well then, let’s play this little game out, shall we?” he said, and then nodded to the stormtroopers “bring them up.”

“Yes, general,” the Captain replied and Rey felt several blasters press into her back while her wrists were forced into cuffs.

“There’s really no need, General whoever you are,” Rey snarled, “as you can obviously tell, I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“General Gaitus Avadear,” the man replied, “and I hope you don’t find this crass, but seeing as the last time we admitted you to the official residence of the Supreme Leader without cuffs he ended up in two pieces, I’m afraid you’ll have to pardon the intrusion.”

Rey felt one of the blasters shove her between the shoulder blades and she stepped forward and followed the general out of the hanger. Two squads of stormtroopers surrounded them the whole way up and into the heart of the Incinerator. Rey tried as much as she could to remember the layout on the off chance that it might help if they had to run, but eventually it all blurred into the same sleek, bland design.

Eventually they came to a high security elevator and took it up a few floors. When they stepped out into the hallway, Rey could feel they were close. It wasn’t like having him in her head where every feeling richoched back and forth between them, but more like a faint tug at the back of her mind or a gentle nudge that told her, right over there.

Then the door opened. The room appeared to be something reminiscent of Snoke’s throne room, although starker. Additionally, the throne at the center appeared to have been neatly carved into a few pieces. There were officers standing along the back wall, none of whom appeared to be in fine spirits despite the prize of capturing notorious members of the Resistance. The only one who appeared even maliciously glad to see them was the lurking figure of General Hux at the back.

Also waiting with the officers, Rey sensed the clone woman who’d freed her a few days before. She was still dressed as any other high ranking stormtrooper, but Rey could feel the way her eyes followed them as they entered.

The Supreme Leader himself, however, was not there.

“Don’t worry,” General Hux said with a bitter smile, “I’m sure he’ll decide to storm back in and grace us with his charming presence again shortly enough.”

Poe opened his mouth to say something snide, but Rey carefully stepped on his foot to delay any commentary.

“He’ll be here soon,” Rey said. She closed her eyes and let her mind reach out, moving herself through the Force until she felt him watching her back.

“What is… is she doing some Force thing?” Hux asked suspiciously.

“Don’t worry,” Finn reassured him, “she doesn’t usually choke anyone.”

It was going to be impossible, Rey decided. With this group of people they’d be so busy sniping at each other they’d never even get around to fighting the Yuuzhan Vong.

Just then, the door opened and Kylo Ren whirled into the room like a seething black storm cloud of anger and tension. Their eyes met in the flesh for the first time since fighting back-to-back on the Supremacy and Rey took a moment to stare silently.

He looked gaunter, harder, one eye still a little red and dark circles beneath both. His black hair was falling over his face like he’d just come from a fight and he was holding his lightsaber in his hand, off for now. He quirked his head to the side a little as he took them in.

“Supreme Leader Ren,” Poe addressed him, not entirely keeping every trace of acid out of the name as he spoke, “I think we met once. There was some torture. I’m Commander Poe Dameron of the Resistance and I’ve been authorized by General Organa to present you with conditions for a joint attack against the Yuuzhan Vong.”

Kylo Ren squinted at Poe in sort of disgusted disbelief.

“You barely have enough ships to supply your bases,” he said derisively, “get them out of here. All but the girl.”

“Wait!” Finn cut in, “I, uh, we’ve met as well. You, um, you sliced my back in half. But if you send us away, you know you’re going to lose to the Yuuzhan Vong. So give us a chance, because otherwise you’re running out of options!”

The High Command seemed to be getting restless.

“Whatever intelligence they’re trying to bargain with,” a slim older woman with a knot of thick black hair under an Admiral’s cap said, “I’m sure it can be extracted just as easily in a cell rather than having these underlings waste our time.”

“Please,” Rey said, turning and addressing Kylo Ren directly. He avoided her gaze. She hardened herself against him again. “We’re not just offering information for you to torture out of us. We’re offering tech. And we left our mechanic safely at home.”

He stepped closer to her and she raised her chin defiantly to look him in the eye. No more games this time. She knew where he stood now.

“Fine then,” he said with venom. “Make your offer.”

There was a barely audible intake of breath from the High Command officers. It likely was not, Rey realized, an easy thing for him to agree to right now. He wasn’t as popular as he’d like to be.

“The Resistance is prepared to offer the services of our ships and crew to plan a joint attack on the Yuuzhan Vong. We are also prepared to offer a solution to the problem of shielding ships from plasma cannon technology,” Poe said, “but we want something in return. Not only do we ask you to guarantee a temporary ceasefire between our respective fleets, but we will also require access to your navigational charts of the Unknown Regions.”

“You can deflect the plasma? With your existing shield system?” General Avadear asked, his interest finally piqued.

“Our mechanics have a way to modify the existing deflector shield systems to significantly reduce the damage done by plasma cannons at a normal range,” Poe confirmed, “if you agree to our terms then our mechanics can come aboard to teach yours how to apply the modification to your entire fleet. But we need our safety guaranteed for the duration of the operation.”

“Do it,” Kylo Ren said, deciding abruptly.

“Supreme Leader, how can you trust that this-?” General Hux began but then stopped himself this time before the choking could even begin.

“We do this,” Kylo Ren addressed the rest of the High Command, “or we die. You have your orders. Send the message to the fleet. Ceasefire on all Resistance ships.”

Rey breathed a sigh of relief.

“As to the second part of our demands,” Finn said, “we haven’t addressed how we can access your navigational data on the Unknown Regions.”

“We haven’t addressed it because you won’t,” Kylo Ren said. He really didn’t seem to like Finn, Rey realized. With Poe there was a sort of ambivalent hostility, but when he spoke to Finn there was real temper threatening at the edge of his voice. Still no approval for traitors? That seemed somewhat ironic given how he’d attained his current position. Or perhaps it was simply that he knew Finn had been there, had watched, had cried out in horror when Han Solo’s body slumped down into the reactor.

“Then we don’t have a deal,” Poe said, immediately appearing behind Finn and placing a hand protectively on his shoulder.

“Supreme Leader, if I might ask, why is the Resistance interested in navigating the Unknown Regions?” the voice of the clone woman came from behind them. “And is this perhaps related to the information you’ve collected interrogating the Yuuzhan Vong?”

“Give us the plans and we’ll tell you,” Poe shot back.

“Listen!” Rey shouted, her frustration with the whole backhanded process getting the better of her. “We both want to stop the invasion! We’re on the same side right now! So please can you all just try for a few minutes to just trust one another a tiny little bit!”

After her outburst no one spoke for a few seconds.

“We think the Yuuzhan Vong base ship is still in the Unknown Regions, somewhere near Ilum,” Rey said slowly, and Poe made a distressed sigh through his teeth as she handed over their intel, “fighting the Yuuzhan Vong, even together, even with shields, we could still lose. But if I can get into their base ship and find their leadership, we might have a chance to hit them when they’re disorganized and drive them out without a war that destroys most of the galaxy.”

“You won’t get navigational data,” Kylo Ren said finally, and despite the frostiness of his tone Rey noticed him look down to hide the conflict that appeared so easily across his face, “but we’ll send a convoy to Ilum.”

“I need to be there,” Rey said, “you know why. You know what’s at stake… for both of us.”

“You’ll stay here,” he replied without so much as taking the time to consider it. “And the First Order will decide what to do if there’s any base ship.”

“I really think the Resistance ought to go,” Rey said firmly, layering her voice with the commanding tone of the Force just to get his attention. “As you recall, I’m a very dangerous person. I killed a room full of guards and your all-powerful Snoke. I’m certain I’ll be needed.”

His face was blank and unreadable when he turned back to face her, but she could feel the rage mounting inside of him. He had to have known she’d use it eventually. He had to have predicted she’d use every inch of advantage she could claw away from him if she had to.

“Both of us then,” he replied and then turned to leave the room.

“Supreme Leader, I’m sorry, what are your orders?” one of the Admirals called after him.

“Let them call for their mechanic and then get to the holomaps. We have plans to make” he said over his shoulder, “and Avadear, they don’t need any cuffs.”

"Just like that he's allowing rebel scum into the command hub?" General Hux asked in disbelief to his colleagues as a few of the guards moved to free Rey, Finn, and Poe.

"Competent rebel scum," Finn corrected him and Rey caught a glimpse of Poe giving him a subtle high five in return.

Minus their cuffs, Rey, Finn, and Poe followed a line of stormtroopers down the hall. The First Order officers gave them a sort of berth, as they though they were invisible now that they existed in the liminal space of both enemies and allies.

“How is it seeing the Supreme Leader here in person again?” Finn whispered to her as they walked. “And uh, how’s your head?”

“My own,” Rey whispered back shortly, “I’m fine.”

“Why do I get the feeling,” Poe muttered, “that the murderous psychopath is actually more on our side than most of his officers?”

Rey glanced over her shoulder and spotted General Hux and a cabal of other High Command already muttering amongst themselves. She would have to hope that whatever little intrigue they were plotting would wait until after the war for their survival. But perhaps, she thought with exasperation, that was too much to ask for when dealing with the First Order.

When they entered the massive planning room, a few logistics officers were already there and a massive holomap of the galaxy covered in red points filled the air above them. Kylo Ren stood beneath it, starting up into the three dimensional suspension of star systems and ships.

“Our intelligence is dwindling, but we have a few new reports of Yuuzhan Vong movement around some of the hyperspace trade routes. There’s a high possibility that they’ll move on the Core in the next few days,” one of the lieutenants said. “And we’ve heard more rumors from the final communications we’ve picked up from the planets they’ve seized. They aren’t just decimating native lifeforms. It seems like they're already introducing new organisms and perhaps intentionally creating a genetically engineered biome for their species.”

“And what about their point of origin?” Poe asked, “have you picked up how they're moving new ships in?”

The lieutenant cast him a suspicious look instead of answering immediately, but then flinched at a single hand gesture from Kylo Ren.

“We can’t pinpoint it exactly,” she rushed to correct her error, “but we believe they entered the galaxy through the Unknown Regions and then jumped their fleet into hidden or empty sectors in the upper quadrants to try to cut them off first. If we had to guess, it’s likely that more of them are still waiting in the Unknown Regions for a second attack after they try for the Core.”

“And have you been able to interrogate any of them?” Finn asked, “Or find out anything about their command structure?”

“I’m afraid they don’t take kindly to conventional interrogation,” General Avadear cut in, “in fact many of them seem to enjoy it.”

“From unverified observations we believe they operate on a caste system of some kind. We mainly have contact with the warrior caste, although we have recovered some slaves whose bodies have not been surgically modified,” the lieutenant offered, “several of those who have died during interrogation have mentioned particular Gods and allegiance to a ruling caste.”

“Overlord Shimrra,” Rey said, “that was what one of the pilots said to us.”

“The question is, even if we could kill their overlord,” Kylo Ren said, his voice flat, “would it stop them?”

His question seemed uncomfortably pointed and Rey glanced again at General Hux who seemed to have enough self-preservation left in him to duck his head submissively.

“Something has cut them off from the Force,” Rey said, pondering through the problem out loud, “and this invasion… the way they’re trying to modify those planets to their biology… I think their connection to these sentient technologies may be more than just a cultural difference.”

“They aren’t just cut off,” Kylo Ren said, his words sharp, “they’re using surgical modification to sever connections to the Force.”

Rey met his gaze. She could see the horror etched into his expression. That faint remaining trace of softness that she’d seen creep into his eyes before. The part of him that had made her think, that she’d foolishly thought, could be brought back and saved. But no matter how much she shared in his pain, she made herself remember that he would only transform his empathy into fuel for his hate.

“Whatever we know or don’t know about the Yuuzhan Vong,” Finn said, “taking out their leader is our best shot at victory when we’re this outnumbered. I’d be willing to bet on the odds that a society that makes slaves out of the ones it finds flawed wouldn’t recover so quickly from losing a leader who's genetically chosen.”

“And I suppose you learned these expert tactics from the Resistance?” the dark-haired Admiral asked him with a mocking smile.

“I learned them from your training sims, Admiral,” Finn said without blinking an eye, “troops should protect the ranking officer over the rest of their squad.”

Rey noticed Poe’s face turning a little pink at that as he stared at Finn with a barely repressed grin.

“I assume then,” General Avadear intervened, “that you’re proposing an attack on their base ship with the intent of destroying their leader. A full scale assault may not be possible given the conditions here.”

“Then send us,” Rey replied, “we’ll find a way in. After all, we’re expendable to you.”

“Fine by me then little Jedi,” he shrugged, “I’ll throw you on a ship myself.”

Just then he seemed to start finding his collar a little tight. Rey heard the faint subsonic shiver of the Force bending in around his throat.

“You’ll send out a scouting party to Ilum,” Kylo Ren ordered as Avadear turned a little red, “and you’ll find me a way onto that base ship.”

Then he let go and Avadear cleared his throat a few times with the cool bearing of a man who’d faced far longer without air before.

“Of course Supreme Leader,” he said pleasantly, “it should take a few shifts for them to make it out to Ilum.”

“Then we have plenty of time,” Kylo Ren said, turning back to Poe with the same disinterest in his tone, “for you to bring your mechanic on board and stop hiding your fleet.”

Poe glared back at him and then nodded tersely.

“Really enjoyable being allies with you,” he said with mocking sincerity, “let’s get this over with as soon as possible.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to live my dream of writing a shitty hangout comedy where Star Wars characters just sit around and making cutting comments about one another. 
> 
> Comments evoke in me something close to the frightening joy of the Kantian Sublime and Kudos bring the pure pleasure of a mimesis so perfect it evokes a Platonic Form.


	12. Smolder

General Leia Organa leaned against the bridge consol of her ship and stared up at the massive First Order dreadnaught in front of them.

“Are you sure you won’t come?” Rose asked her again, “they’ll want you to help work on battle tactics.”

“You can talk to me on the comms,” Leia replied, trying to smile and reassure the young mechanic. “But Rose, things are going to be tense over there and we need this to work as smoothly as it can. If I came, I’d only add to the trouble.”

“Alright,” Rose said doubtfully, climbing into the shuttle with the rest of her team of mechanics, “but if you change your mind, there’s always another shuttle.”

The doors sealed so the shuttle could launch and Leia finally allowed herself to sink down into a chair. She was tired. Not the sort of tired after a hard day of work, but a deep kind of tired that pierced down into the marrow of her bone. The tired that came with age and pain.

She could feel her son in there. She could always feel him, even before he was born. While she’d never taken Luke up on his offer to train her, with Ben it had just been instinct. And she could feel him now, still angry, still afraid. But he had become like a stranger. Still, he was so close. All she had to do was get on the shuttle.

“You aren’t going?” Lando’s voice came from behind her. “All the other Resistance ships are sending shuttles to help plan the attack.”

“You know why I’m not going, Lando,” she sighed.

He came and sat beside her. He’d somehow found a rather snappy dove grey suit in one of the Resistance vessels. But Lando had always had a knack for making anything stylish.

“I’m not going anywhere either,” he said slowly, “I hope you know that. I may not always… buy in. But I won’t try to run anymore.”

He put his hand over hers. For a moment, they both looked around the empty bridge and felt the palpable absence of friends. Luke. Han. It was like a gaping hole between them that their hands could only barely stretch across.

“Do you remember that time after the war when you bought Han that clunker and made him a bet he couldn’t win a race with it?” Leia said, desperate to break the silence.

“Oh yeah,” Lando said with a grin, “and somehow he did it. I knew he cheated, but since I couldn’t figure out how, I had to pay up.”

“He skipped his final lap,” Leia smirked, “he tripped the scanners and hid on the side of a rock for a while to make it look convincing.”

“You were in on it?” Lando asked, aghast.

“Of course I was, we needed the money,” Leia shrugged. “You remember how we were living back then.”

“I remember,” Lando began carefully, “that you had a young child to care for on top of rebuilding the galaxy. And Han made me bring his credits in person to the house.”

“That was one of the last times you ever saw Ben, I suppose,” Leia said and then ran a hand over her eyes.

“It might not be,” Lando replied gently, “he’s still out there, isn’t he?”

“I know I can never have him back,” Leia admitted, “and Rey did all she could. She’s so strong. If anyone could, it would have been her. So brave and yet so kind.”

“If anyone has a chance of getting us out of this mess,” Lando agreed, “it’s her.”

“I’m not going to let her go alone,” Leia said, wiping her eyes and taking a deep breath through her nose. “I won’t sit on a ship again and watch for the sake of strategy. This time, I’ll be there, and even if I don’t come back, I trust that someone else will take up the burden.”

She expected push-back or another fight. But instead, Lando merely wrapped one arm around her back and gave her a firm squeeze.

They both stared up at the Incinerator and waited for the next generation to make their plan.

***

Finn lay back onto the short couch in the central room of the Millenium Falcon. It was easy to forget in here that they were still inside the First Order ship. Without windows or the sounds of stormtroopers marching, he could almost pretend he was just spending a normal night on the ship.

Being back on a First Order ship scared him. It scared him because it forced him to realize how normal it felt. How naturally it all came back. This had been everything he’d ever known until less than a year ago when he’d run from it.

At the very least, he thought, his part was over now. It was up to the commanders to make an attack plan. It was up to the scouts to find a way to the base ship. It was up to Rey to keep Kylo Ren under control.

And what was it he needed to do? There was a very insistent answer pressing on his mind, but he didn’t want to acknowledge it.

“Finn?” A soft voice said from the doorway. He sat up quickly. Rose was standing there. She looked well, although she still limped just a little on one side. There was a smudge of grease on her chin. “Sorry if I woke you up, I just need to finish your shields now that I’m pretty certain we don’t have to worry about First Order lasers.”

“Do you want any help?” Finn offered, “Rey claims that I break engines just by looking at them, but at the very least I can hand you things.”

“I’m really okay,” Rose said, walking past him and down towards the engines. “They had to reconstruct a lot of my leg and hip after the skimmer, but it’s almost healed now.”

“I know you can do it,” Finn said, and then smiled, “I mean, you’ve already done it to one of the largest ships in the entire First Order fleet. I just meant… well, I’m trying to say that I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to say sorry to me, Finn,” Rose sighed, “I knew what I was doing when I saved you.”

“But I’m sorry that I just left after that and I never came to see you,” Finn said, “because you know it wasn’t just that I felt guilty. I did feel sorry that you were hurt. I was so scared, Rose, I thought you might die. But we both know that I had more to be sorry for.”

“Oh Finn!” Rose said, turning suddenly and throwing her arms around his neck, “you don’t think I’m angry because of that kiss do you?”

“What? I mean, yes, but what?” Finn yelped.

“I’m not mad at you because of some sort of romantic rejection!” Rose yelled stepping back and punching him in the arm hard enough that he winced, “I was upset because it felt like we’d gone on this whole adventure and then you just left and never talked to me! And you were worried because of one stupid kiss? You’re such a complete dummy, Finn!”

“Ow! Stop!” Finn said as she continued to punch him in the arm. “You’re right, okay? I’m terrible! But I’m trying to say I’m sorry and I miss you and you’re my friend!”

Rose stopped punching him and then wrapped him into a massive hug.

“So then don’t leave me behind!” Rose laughed tearfully into his shoulder, “even if you want to go make mooney eyes at Poe, you’d better come back and tell me about it!”

“Wait, no, I do not make mooney eyes at… anyone!” Finn objected.

Rose’s face hardened and she just shook her head at him.

“You’re impossible,” she finally said, “we’re all probably going to die tomorrow and yet you’re seriously going to stand here and tell me ‘I do not make mooney eyes at beautiful Commander Dameron with his stupid curly hair and his stupid chiseled jaw!’”

“Can I please just help you fix this shield generator?” Finn begged, wishing the conversation could just end.

“No, I can’t even concentrate with you here,” Rose shot back, “go find something useful to do instead of just… pining.”

Finn staggered back, but, hoping to conclude his apology with obedience, he left the Falcon and stepped back out into the hanger of the dreadnaught.

A squad of stormtroopers were still waiting at their post watching the ship. However, the hanger itself was now busy with other Resistance shuttles and mechanics everywhere trying to get to as many shield systems as they could.

Finn squinted and looked around, hoping to find some Resistance officer he could tag along with for a bit.

“Looking for someone in particular?” a cool female voice said from below. Finn glanced down and saw the squadleader, the Phasma clone.

“No I’m just…” Finn trailed off.

“I suppose you’re the one who convinced your pilot to come save my trainees,” the Phasma clone said, “now that we’re technically allies I can thank you for that.”

“You’d thank me even though I’m the traitor?” Finn asked, “even though I’m FN-2187?”

“You may be falling into the same line of thinking many of the officers here do,” the woman commented dryly, “but to their surprise, I’m often very different than your former Captain Phasma.”

“Is there something else I can call you?” Finn asked, “just so I don’t keep calling you 'clone Phasma' in my head?”

“My designation is PH-Alius,” the woman said, “so essentially, 'clone Phasma.'”

“How about Phalius?” Finn suggested, “that’s easier.”

“You want to give me a nickname?” she scoffed.

“What they call you in the First Order, your designation,” Finn answered, “that’s not a name. Even the trainees give each other names, although they tell us not to. Because if we give each other names, we might go back and save each other and jeopardize the mission.”

“We only win because we prioritize the mission,” she said coldly. “That’s what it means to be a soldier.”

“I aced all my combat sims,” Finn shrugged, “but somehow I never got good at being a soldier. And you don’t all have to be… after this. If we win, you don’t have to keep fighting us.”

“If you expect every stormtrooper in the First Order to turn traitor like you,” she said, shaking her head, “you're deluded. I may have been grown in a lab and raised by a vid screen, but even I have a clearer picture of reality.”

“You’re a lot funnier than your, what was it, genetic donor?” Finn laughed, “I promise I don’t expect every single stormtrooper to fully defect. I’m just… I have to hope that some of you will change the rules.”

“Well, I’ll be working on the rule that says an incompetent general can call transport ships into battle as cover,” she replied darkly, “that’s first on my list.”

Just then, Finn spotted Poe and a group of other Resistance officers coming out of an elevator.

“Well, I hope we both make it through tomorrow, Lieutenant,” Finn said with a nod.

“Just call me Phalius,” she said, “it does have… a ring.”

“May the Force be with you, Phalius,” he said and even through the helmet, he could tell that hearing those words had surprised her.

Finn jogged over to meet the group of officers.

“Any news?” he asked as he drew close.

“We’re going to pick a fight to make sure they come down the hyperspace routes,” Captain Pava said, “but we’re going to hold back some ships on the border of the Unknown Regions to make sure that if going for the baseship brings out more of them, we’re ready for it.”

“Nothing to do until those scouts get back,” Captain Millhouse advised him, “so you might as well try to get some sleep.”

Sleep. On the night before a battle that could conceivably end the galaxy. It was laughable.

“I’m going to try to catch a few hours on the Falcon,” Poe sighed, “I don’t like looking at this ship. It gives me the creeps.”

“I guess,” Finn said with a deep breath, “I guess I’ll head back too. And try to rest.”

Time didn’t even seem relevant here inside the massive ship. He could have been awake for weeks and never even noticed.

As he headed back to the Millenium Falcon he saw Rose walking carefully down the ramp having apparently finished their shields. She raised her eyebrows when she spotted him with Poe.

“Only a couple more to go,” she sighed as they passed her, “and then I’m taking a nap.”

“Everyone seems so optimistic about the possibility of falling asleep here,” Finn said, shaking his head.

“There’s a few Relaxers some of the pilots use after long shifts if you want to try one,” Poe offered as they climbed back into the ship, “but you’ll be drowsy if you try to wake up before a full six hour cycle.”

“I’m alright,” Finn said, avoiding the other man’s gaze. The silence stretched until it became unbearably awkward.

“I might take one,” Poe finally said and turned to go look through the med supplies.

“Wait!” Finn blurted out, and reflexively grabbed Poe’s hand before he could leave. He turned back slowly, but he let his hand stay in Finn’s. His skin was warm, a little rough and dry on the sides of his fingers.

“What are we doing?” Poe laughed nervously. “Look, Finn, you’re my best friend and I don’t want to mess anything up between us.”

“Right, definitely,” Finn said, slowly lacing his finger’s with Poe’s. “And this is basically the worst timing, I mean, we’re under a lot of stress. Things are very unstable.”

“Absolutely,” Poe said with some relief, stepping a little closer, “so we can just put this whole discussion off for a better time. When we’re not fighting a huge war for our survival.”

“Emotionally, we’re just not ready,” Finn said, nodding vigorously, “so we should be responsible and just table this whole thing.”

Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to Poe’s again. This time it wasn’t so hard or frantic. He kissed him lightly and slowly. He let his free hand run down the side of Poe’s face softly and felt the smoothness of his cheek turn gradually into stubble.

“I don’t want to live another day without telling you that I think I’m in love with you,” Poe admitted hoarsely as they took a few breaths and then pressed their foreheads together.

“Even if we mess this up?” Finn asked. Poe smiled against his mouth.

“Who cares? We’ll probably die in a battle,” he sighed. “I’d rather do this than knock myself out and sleep.”

“I just want you to know I’ve never felt this way. Ever. About anyone,” Finn said seriously as Poe moved down the hallway towards the bunks.

“I’d take that as more of a compliment if I didn’t know you grew up as a military slave,” Poe said with a crease of his brow.

“You know what I mean,” Finn groaned and followed him down the hall. “Can you just let me be nice to you?”

He pressed close to Poe against the wall and leaned in to let his lips trail down the other man’s neck.

“Please yes, you can be as nice and you’d like,” Poe gasped. “I know we’ve usually got a sort of banter thing going on but…”

“We’ll skip it for now,” Finn agreed.

***

It was still several hours before the scouts would return, but General Gaitus Avadear had no interest in trying to sleep. Most of the Resistance officers had returned to their ships until they were called back and the Supreme Leader had retired to his quarters.

The general took the elevator down to the high security prisoner deck. A few traitors were still in the cells, he thought with a smile, completely unaware that only a few floors above them the Resistance was making an alliance with their captors. That would be a fun little game to play if they managed to drive out the invaders tomorrow. Let the Resistance dig its own grave by playing nice. He had to think of the survival of the First Order, in the long term if the Supreme Leader was occupied by the short.

At the end of the hallway, however, was their only surviving Yuuzhan Vong captive. Stormtrooper salvage crews had recovered as many of their small ships as they could after the initial battles, but most of their crews were dead by the time they opened the cockpits. Useful only in dissection, Avadear thought with some disgust.

However, the clone woman, PH-Alius as they called her, had managed to take prisoners on the ground when she had captured what appeared to be a Yuuzhan Vong ground raiding ship during the battle of the Waxba nebula. Those had been taken alive, although most of them by now had died during the interrogation process. They’d given him nothing but what he already knew. Speeches about Gods. Claims that impure machines could never harm them. Demands to surrender and bow to the Yuuzhan Vong overlord.

He was taking a different tack with the last one they had. Warrior caste like the rest of them, this one he had saved for a special project.

As he entered the chamber, he saw that the creature was just starting to stir from its sedated slumber.

“Welcome back, Vua,” Avadear said, pronouncing the creature’s name carelessly, without any attempt at accent. “Are you ready to talk to me this time?”

“I welcome this suffering,” the creature said, head lolling back from the pain, “and I will return soon to my Gods.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure about soon,” Avadear chuckled, “I still need you to answer some questions. You’re probably familiar. Where are you from? What are your plans? Where is your Overlord?”

With each question, the chair that clamped the creature down injected a caustic compound through its thick hide that caused its body to twist and shudder with pain.

“You will be cleansed. And the Yuuzhan Vong will transform your galaxy and offer it to the Gods,” the creature replied.

“Still refusing to help me,” Avadear sighed, “all because you think if I kill you, you’ll be honored by your Gods. But tell me, Vua, do you really think you have their favor now?”

“Death fighting an enemy is the highest honor,” the creature spat, lunging forward as far as the restraints would go.

“Tell me, Vua, how do you feel?” Avadear asked, “other than the pain of course. Do you feel whole? Are all those limbs you sacrificed bringing you closer to your Gods?”

It was difficult to tell through the scarring, but he thought he saw the creature falter for a moment.

“What have you done?” it finally hissed.

“Well, during your little rest, I decided to try an experiment, Vua,” Avadear said, pacing around and drawing a small mirror from the drawer. “I borrowed that interesting eye of yours, for example, and the hand. Just to examine what it was you’d added to yourself.”

“I can still see,” the creature said, “and I still feel my hand.”

“Well,” Avadear said with a theatrical shrug, “I’m afraid your body has had to accept the best we had to offer. We didn’t want to leave you eyeless and handless of course. I do hope you can forgive the substitution.”

He offered the mirror. It was incredible to see the expression on the creature’s face change. He’d had the surgeons remove all of the cosmetic details on the artificial eye to make sure the Yuuzhan Vong would see through the clear acrylic to the delicate metal chip beneath that was projecting to its brain. As for the hand, well, it was a standard older piece without a flesh overlay.

“Perhaps you need to reconsider, Shamed One,” Avadear said, “if your Gods will take you now. Unless, of course, you answer my questions.”

By the time he was finished, the Yuuzhan Vong was screaming for mercy. General Avadear walked back towards the elevator with a sense of satisfaction.

When he entered the elevator, however, he discovered the lurking shadow of General Hux already inside. It was not unusual, he thought, the man never slept even under normal circumstances.

“So you convinced it to talk to you this time?” Hux asked as he pressed the button to return to the upper decks.

“I’ve got a whole tale to tell the Supreme Leader now,” Avadear confirmed, “some rather tragic stuff. A race of people fleeing from some far off galaxy. A sentient homeworld destroyed by droid armies. Plenty of names for the organisms they use to simulate mechanic technology. And of course, confirmation that the great court of Overlord Shimrra Jamaane is indeed on something it called their ‘world-ship.’”

“You know Ren will want to go for the Overlord,” Hux suggested, “he takes the threat… very personally. It makes him rash.”

“Perhaps that’s for the best,” Avadear replied, “I’d prefer that the First Order led any mission to their baseship rather than allowing the Resistance to take command of our resources.”

“You’d allow the Supreme Leader of the First Order to personally attempt a nearly suicidal mission to assassinate a rival that might very well destroy the entire galaxy?” Hux asked. “When sending the Resistance could eliminate their greatest assets?”

Avadear could tell the man was sizing him up. The more unstable his position became, the more dangerous Armitage Hux could be. He still held considerable sway with the High Command. All the Supreme Leader was doing when he strangled him was giving him more persuasive power.

But of course, Avadear thought, the First Order would collapse if Hux was in command. They needed someone strong. Someone smarter than Hux.

“I do not _allow_ the Supreme Leader to do anything, general,” Avadear finally replied as the elevator doors opened, “I concentrate my efforts on serving the First Order.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fitting a little of everything into this chapter. The sads, the romance, the creepy. Tune in next time and I may eventually get back to having an actual adventure plot again. 
> 
> Comment now and I'll pretend that you have a cameo as a random stormtrooper whose name is never mentioned in the next installment. Isn't that a fun prize? Aren't I such a fun and engaging author to interact with??


	13. Combust

He’d tried to sleep for a few hours before giving it up. The room around him was pitch black and he swung his legs down over the edge of the bed to feel the cold floor against his bare feet.

Kylo Ren leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and ran his hands through his hair. He knew he needed rest. He needed to be at his best the next day if they were going to survive.

The palm of his burned hand itched. He took a moment to examined it. In the dark it was difficult to tell how it was healing. He should have just put a bacta patch on it. It was distracting now.

In his stomach he was suddenly overwhelmed with a cold empty feeling. It was so powerful for a moment that he felt his face crumpling into a grimace of pain. All he had to do was reach out and he knew he could find her, but at the same time he wanted nothing more than to never see Rey again.

“Rey?” he finally said, his voice coming out soft and small. He couldn’t see anything in the darkness. Stupid, he told himself, weak.

“I can’t sleep either,” her voice suddenly replied from across the room. “I keep worrying even though I know it won’t help.”

“Worried that you can’t fulfill your destiny?” he asked, “or just afraid to die.”

“Both I guess, I don’t know,” Rey admitted, then paused before speaking again, “... when I was on Jakku I always slept so lightly. Because I had to. I had to be ready with a knife if some other scavenger came looking to score easier loot. Or wild Tetuuls would climb onto the roof because they smelled a meal. So it seems silly that now I can’t sleep at all here on a ship surrounded by guards.”

“I wouldn’t harm you,” he reacted with a flash of defensive anger, “or any of your… friends.”

“Stop it,” Rey’s voice came harsher through the darkness this time, “stop acting like I mean anything to you. If I did, you wouldn’t be where you are now. If anything mattered to you besides your twisted vision of power, then you would have come and found me in person instead of reaching into my head.”

“You still think I’m the monster,” he said with a faint laugh.

“That’s the whole problem,” Rey said evenly, “I know that you aren’t. And yet you choose to act like one. And even now when the Force itself is at risk and you have every opportunity to change, you won’t. You’ll look at the Force and the balance inside of yourself and you’ll still choose to hide in the dark.”

“I’m not hiding!” he said, standing up suddenly.

But there was no reply. She’d gone.

He felt his way over to the table and chewed a sedative tablet until it was fine powder in his mouth. The light stayed off so he didn’t have to see his face reflected in the glass. In a few minutes, the sedative knocked him into a blank and dreamless sleep.

When he woke up there was a message waiting for him, glowing softly on the screen to rouse him out of sleep. The scouts had returned. He called for a meeting.

The First Order High Command met in the largest room with a holomap and they were joined shortly by the Resistance officers. The bothan admiral was their highest ranked officer, but Dameron was there again to do most of the talking. And FN-2187. They came in together.

Rey was the last to arrive and she made a point of not looking at him as she entered. Her defenses were tighter than usual and he could get nothing but a calm resilience from her.

Looking around, he could tell none of them were well-rested. Most of the officers had only caught a few hours of sleep in between planning and prepping their ships. The mood in the room was quiet and sober. Everyone spoke with a slight hush in their voices.

“Yuuzhan Vong troops have started moving off of the planets they’ve captured,” the logistics officer on duty began by saying, “we think it’s likely they’re preparing for an attack in the next few cycles.”

“Move every ship with updated shields into defensive positions and put them on alert,” he ordered. His voice came out low and quiet, like speaking at a funeral. He had no energy to rage. He turned to Avadear, who he’d put in charge of the baseship, “What did the scouts find?”

“Your intel was correct,” General Avadear addressed the Resistance officers, “we did locate a large Yuuzhan Vong vessel near Ilum. It does appear to be a baseship for their operation judging by its sheer size. The scouts were able to take a few scans, but any droid that came too close to it was vaporized. They must have sensors for any inorganic technology.”

The holomap shifted to a display of the scans taken of the baseship. Massive was an understatement. The thing was the size of a small moon, although its shape was longer and flatter and it had odd protrusions that looked something like a ring of tendrils around the sides.

“So how can we get inside?” Commander Dameron asked as he considered the scans.

“It will be impossible to simply land a ship on the base without whatever sensors they’re using picking it up,” General Avadear began, “but based on our tests, they haven’t shot down any metallic alloys that make up natural debris around Ilum.”

“So we’ll have to bring a ship in dead,” Commander Dameron said, “somehow find an entrance without any systems turned on, and then fly back out before they blow us up.”

“We can get in,” Kylo Ren said. It was time to share a little on their side what they’d been working on, “the First Order has several Yuuzhan Vong ships we’ve taken for study and one of them is large enough to fit another ship inside.”

“Regarding the captured transport, Supreme Leader,” General Avadear said, “I was recently able to increase the compliance of one of the captive Yuuzhan Vong. It has confirmed that the Overlord is on the baseship. We’ve taken enough of their biological components, and our pilots have been able to restore basic mobility to their ships. Additionally, the creature has given up much more information on their technological capabilities.”

“The Yuuzhan Vong navigate hyperspace using a gravity bending invertebrate the prisoner called a yammosk. We’ll need to install a temporary hyperspace drive to get there, unless any of you know how to commune with a giant alien cephalopod, but once we’re near we can switch the controls over to their biolocked steering,” a stormtrooper captain from Avadear’s unit said.

The general pulled up some of the transcripts so that the whole room could scan through them. Kylo Ren’s eyes flicked over him, but he felt himself drawn to one element in particular. The Yuuzhan Vong had been devouring other galaxies for centuries after the destruction of their homeworld, a planet with which they’d apparently had a sort of sentient connection with. Not just outside of the Force, he considered, but ripped away from it. They weren’t simply some alternative to the Force. They were a wound in its very fabric.

“If they weren’t trying to fight us, we could try to help them,” Rey said quietly to herself as she read over the same parts.

“Even if you keep a ship inside powered down,” one of the Resistance pilots pointed out as she looked over the description of the ship’s defenses, “you’ll still need a distraction to keep them busy or you’ll be caught before you ever make it to the Overlord.”

“I can do it,” one of the mechanics said, stepping forward, “if you get me inside their shields, I can rig an inertial compensator to start tearing up their shields from within assuming this prisoner is telling the truth about using an organic form of gravity inhibition. Then the First Order can put any of its most agile ships to engage them on the outside and do some damage.”

“You shouldn’t be going,” FN-2187 immediately told the mechanic with some alarm, “they’ll need you here to keep the ships safe.”

“If we can’t run anything electrical until we’re inside then you’ll need to bring someone who can expand the inertial compensator sphere without blowing the whole thing out,” the mechanic replied coolly, “which isn’t the sort of thing you can just pick up in a few hours. I’m going.”

“The Resistance has already agreed to manage the operation against the baseship,” General Hux suggested, “as I believe your Jedi warrior said, the First Order will not sacrifice our resources for a mission based on so little information.”

“The First Order will handle the baseship,” Kylo Ren said immediately and Hux’s face fell. Several of his officers couldn’t resist a short sigh of exasperation. He kept his face hard and neutral and continued. “We’ll take your mechanic, but no other Resistance officers or crew will be needed. Lieutenant PH-Alius, on account of your combat experience with the Yuuzhan Vong fighters, I’m giving you control of a squad to act as a diversion. Captain Dorian and Captain Karana will take the Exercitus and provide cover for our escape.”

“I’m sorry, Supreme Leader, but the Jedi girl volunteered to go,” General Hux protested, “surely we can spare her above our own valued troops? Or would you send your finest to die on a fool’s errand?”

“I’m going myself, General,” Kylo Ren replied, “surely that should cheer you up.”

The room exploded into confusion.

“Supreme Leader, it is really not advisable-” Admiral Demarcus began.

“I’m not letting Rose go in there alone with you-” FN-2187 started.

“The Resistance should be given the leadership here,” the bothan officer argued, “or you’ll either silence our contributions or blame us if the plan doesn’t work.”

“You promised me I would go,” Rey cut in, “or I would-”

The numbness was stealing over him again. He imagined if Snoke were still here, what he might do. No infighting. No chaos. That was all he’d brought. He had broken the galaxy, somehow. As much as he tried to feed his past and his legacy to the flames now licking at his feet, they would not be sated. The fire he’d set demanded more fuel.

He needed to say something. Pathetic, his imagination said with the voice of Snoke, all that natural power wasted. No fault of the master, of course, he’d had two. There must be some weakness, some rot, deep inside.

So maybe he couldn’t say anything. He could still cut the throat of anyone trying to talk over him. He reached for the lightsaber.

Just then the door opened and a few of the guards drew their blasters.

“Put those away,” a familiar cutting voice said, the tone imperious even as it was faintly mischievous, “I’m your ally right now.”

He felt cold spreading up through him from deep in the pit of his stomach. There it was again. No more numbness. He felt his breath catch from the mixture of emotion roiling inside of him, as if this time they might succeed in ripping him to shreds from within.

“I want joint command of the attack on the baseship,” she said, striding up to the table without pausing for introductions, “or I will send all of my ships far across the galaxy the minute the Yuuzhan Vong arrive at the Core. That’s my only offer.”

She finally looked at him. General Leia Organa of the Resistance. His mother. He could feel her so strongly, as though the Force between them were a tangible string. And he hated her, so deeply. But at the same time, harming her would be like slicing into his own chest.

“Do it then,” he finally managed to say, and his voice came out sounding like a stranger’s, “select your team for infiltration.”

“Oh, and I want to take the Falcon as our escape ship,” Leia added without flinching, “it’s faster than any ship you’ve got and it can hold more than an Upsilon shuttle.”

He met her gaze. Imagine a mask, he thought.

“Bring it,” he said, forcing his face to be perfectly blank, “if you can fit it inside.”

Somewhere behind them an alert started sounding. The room was silent for a moment. This might be the end for all of them.

“The first Yuuzhan Vong ships just destroyed our sensors on the hyperspace trade routes,” the logistics officer called out, “they’re coming now.”

“Then we need to leave,” Rey said.

As the room quickly cleared, Kylo Ren turned towards the communications officer to order his most elite specialists to the salvage deck to prepare the Yuuzhan Vong ship. But General Avadear caught him quickly before he could start. He’d pried a little into the head’s of his High Command as a precaution. This one, this Gaitus Avadear, he’d decided, was more favorable towards him than most. Certainly, he was suspicious and occasionally contradictory, but he favored the First Order’s stability over his own ambition.

“Supreme Leader,” he addressed him with a quick nod of the head, “I think it is advantageous that you’ll be present on this mission.”

“You aren’t going to tell me I ought to keep myself out of harm’s way for the sake of the First Order?” Kylo Ren said somewhat skeptically.

“I believe you are wise to consider the long term effects if the Resistance does indeed try to claim credit for saving the galaxy from the Yuuzhan Vong,” General Avadear said, “especially given that after this alliance is concluded, we’ll need to take swift action if we want to eliminate the threat they pose. But I have a proposal for you to consider before you go.”

“And what’s that?” he said, beginning to grow irritated.

“Leave the general and her crew behind,” General Avadear whispered, “black out their communications and let the Yuuzhan Vong take care of the problem once you’ve completed the mission.”

“You-” he started, but couldn’t find the words. It was the most rational plan. The most efficient plan. There was no reason to argue against it. Or perhaps one reason. “I need Rey. She could still turn to our side.”

“Supreme Leader,” General Avadear said with a weary smile, “whatever you want with the Jedi girl I’m sure it won’t be ruined if she’s unconscious when she leaves the baseship.”

“A sound idea, general,” he replied, and left it at that.

As the general left, Kylo Ren fought down a strong desire to tear the room to pieces.

 

***

Rey patted herself down one final time before she stepped into the Yuuzhan Vong ship. She had changed from her usual clothes built for comfort and ease into a set of Resistance tactical gear. It was tight and slightly bulky in the chest where there was armor to keep her somewhat protected from the Yuuzhan Vong whips, which were apparently a living symbiote crystalline organism known as an amphistaff. Her lightsaber was clamped firmly to her belt along with her blaster just in case.

As she hesitated at the entrance, she saw Finn approaching with Poe by his side. Whatever had happened with their fight certainly seemed resolved now.

“Looks like we’re on the same side again,” a voice said from behind her and Rey turned to recognized the Phasma clone, PH-Alius. “Although I doubt you’ll find any convenient trees to use this time.”

“The only way either of us survives is together,” Rey replied cautiously. “I am… grateful that you’re willing to work with us.”

“Your friend has been trying to convince me it could continue even after this war,” PH-Alius said, “but I suspect you’re more realistic.”

“My friend was raised by the First Order and he still chose the light,” Rey snapped back at the other woman, “he’s not just some idealist. He’s a hero. Any of you could make that choice.”

“Well, at least until you’re finished with the baseship, I am,” PH-Alius said, turning to leave for her own ship, “tell Finn I’ll be watching his back.”

Rey started to walk towards the Yuuzhan Vong vessel, but then suddenly turned back to the clone. She was already off boarding her own ship. But, Rey thought with new interest, she’d used Finn’s actual name.

“Ready?” Rey asked Finn and Poe as they made it to the ship.

“I can’t express to you how much I don’t want to be inside a massive living coral ship with some sort of mucousy slug brain instead of a control panel,” Poe said. “Not even mentioning the fact that Kylo Ren will be inside.”

“Hey, I’ve been stuck in a ship with Kylo Ren before,” Finn replied, “I mean, I was terrified then and I might be even more terrified now, but last time I did meet this interesting pilot.”

“Well, you’d better not meet another one this time,” Poe growled.

“What is even happening with you two?” Rey asked. They’d both been acting weird for days now, and yet suddenly it was all banter again?

“So much for that Jedi intuition,” Rose’s voice said from behind them and she stopped next to Rey to join them in staring up at the ship. The stormtrooper squads had already boarded. They just had to follow.

“Whatever happens, I just want to say…” Rey began and then didn’t know how to finish, “I just mean… thank you for coming with me.”

Finn grabbed her hand on one side and then Poe’s with the other hand. Rose linked her fingers with Rey’s. They stood there for a minute, and then Rey stepped up and into the ship.

Inside, it was lit by a combination of the Millennium Falcon’s outer lights and an eerie reddish glow from some sort of bioluminescent organism in the porous coral walls. Their ship took up most of the space that would normally be occupied by Yuuzhan Vong ground troops, but Rey could see the silhouette of General Organa inside of the Falcon’s cockpit.

As they entered, Rey felt the stormtroopers turning to stare at them. She glanced over at Finn who raised his eyebrows and then nodded at a few of the stormtroopers as they passed. Rey did the same. If they were all going to die together, the least she could do was acknowledge them as her allies.

Chewbacca poked his head out of the door to the Millenium Falcon, followed closely by BB-8. It took Rey a minute to parse out the combined roar and beeping.

“I don’t love it here either,” Rey replied, “and I wish neither of you had to come.”

Chewbacca shrugged and grunted something to the effect that he’d volunteered and besides, no one ever asked him if he wanted to come.

“You don’t get to complain, buddy, you get to stay on the ship for all the scary parts,” Poe reassured the droid.

BB-8 whirred and whistled to indicate that the ship usually got raided when Poe was gone.

“You won’t even notice if the Yuuzhan Vong get you” Finn told the droid, “you’ve got to stay powered down too until we’re flying away.”

BB-8 responded with a burbling squeal.

“Hey, don’t scare BB-8,” Rey said indignantly, punching Finn in the shoulder.

“That BB unit,” one of the stormtroopers suddenly said, “that’s the one who escaped with the plans to Luke Skywalker on Jakku.”

Rey turned to face the stormtrooper.

“That’s right,” she said coolly, “that droid has survived more battles than most of you, I’d bet.”

“I used to fly with one,” the stormtrooper agreed, “they’re sturdy. I’ll make sure we keep it out of Yuuzhan Vong hands. That’d be a waste.”

Rey nodded, still getting used to the feeling of being on the same side as a stormtrooper.

The feeling of camaraderie was quickly shattered by the arrival of Kylo Ren.

He was dressed in his usual black without the long cape. And Rey immediately noticed that under his arm he had the familiar form of a helmet. A pragmatic choice for a fight, she wondered, or a regression back to old ways? Either way, it made things simpler for her. Let him stomp down his human impulses. It was nothing new.

“Launch the ship,” he said in his bland monotone as soon as he entered. “We need to be there before the Yuuzhan Vong can take Coruscant.”

“Wait!” a voice called from outside.

Rey turned and saw to her surprise Lando Calrissian sprinting towards them. He’d traded the suit and cape for a pilot’s jumpsuit.

“Is there room for one more?” he asked breathlessly to Rey when he arrived.

“You really want to go?” Rose asked, her tone skeptical.

“Of course I don’t want to,” he panted, “but I have to. I have to try to make a difference.”

“Get him off,” Kylo Ren immediately ordered.

Lando turned to look at him and then smiled a very hard smile.

“I believe we’ve met,” he said with a short bow, “Lando Calrissian. Used to own this old ship until someone cheated me out of it. Haven’t seen him around lately, though, the scoundrel.”

Rey watched Kylo Ren’s face go pale white with anger.

“Leave now,” he spat, “before you regret it.”

But the door had already sealed behind him. The Yuuzhan Vong membranes had pulled in tight and the pilot’s were firing up the hyperdrive they’d cobbled awkwardly onto the bottom of the ship so that it could be easily released as soon as they neared Ilum.

“I already regret it,” Lando said with a shrug, looking back at the sealed door, “but you know… the drama of it all.”

Rey let her hand drift to her lightsaber in case the stormtroopers made a move on Lando. She watched Kylo Ren bite his lip for a moment, both furious and desperate to avoid speaking to his father’s former friend more than he absolutely had to.

“You stay in the ship,” he finally said, “and you do not speak to me. Or I have you ejected as a stowaway.”

“You don’t have to twist my arm for that, kid,” Lando said without blinking an eye, “I know you aren’t the nostalgic type.”

The ship lurched beneath them and the bioluminescent coral pulsed a little at the movement. Rey hoped that the hyperdrive engine wasn’t about to just fly off. But then, she felt a quick shudder and then a surge of movement and they made the jump.

They were packed together pretty tightly, Rey thought uncomfortably. The Millenium Falcon was filled with Resistance fighters and outside was filled with stormtroopers. She hovered in the doorway with Finn, Poe, and Rose.

“Pretty long flight I guess,” Poe said after a few seconds of silence, “anyone know some fun songs?”

“We mostly used to sing ‘Hail to the First Order’ or ‘The Empire’s Shining Glory’” Finn muttered, “and they aren’t exactly upbeat.”

“I bet they’re playing Dejarik in there,” Rose sighed with envy, looking back into the Falcon.

“...I’ve got some Sabacc cards actually,” one of the nearby stormtroopers whispered, glancing nervously at Kylo Ren’s back.

Finn raised his eyebrows.

“Resistance against the First Order?” Finn suggested.

“I don’t know how to play,” Rey whispered to him.

“Then you’re lucky,” Kylo Ren said unexpectedly from behind her. He still wasn’t looking at them, but he was clearly listening. The stormtrooper snapped back to attention. “It’s a game made for cheating.”

“Sounds like someone lost a lot of Sabacc games,” Poe said, apparently unable to resist the temptation.

“I can take anything I want from a weak mind, commander,” Kylo Ren replied dryly, “do you think I’d lose a card game unless I wanted to?”

“Is there…” Rose said stiffly, apparently unsure of exactly how she ought to treat the Supreme Leader of the First Order in casual conversation, “another game you’d prefer?”

He glanced at them briefly with a look of pained disgust.

“I have no words to even express to you how much I don’t care about this,” he finally said.

“Fun,” Rey said, “this is fun.”

The stormtroopers did seem to take this comment as a signal that they wouldn’t be violently strangled should they play a few games. At the very least, it was a distraction from the nervousness.

The closer they got to the Yuuzhan Vong, Rey thought, the closer many of them were coming to their deaths. It was ludicrous to imagine that every one of them could make it in and out of the baseship alive. At least with the Resistance fighters, she thought, they’d volunteered with that knowledge.

She starred over at Finn as he considered his hand of cards, and against her will the imagine of him bloody and lifeless on the floor flashed before her eyes. She thought about Poe with a Yuuzhan Vong whip wrapped around his neck. Or Rose, unable to run quite fast enough, covering her head before they tore her apart. She couldn’t lose them. It was unbearable. No matter what, she had to keep them safe.

Her hands felt sweaty and cold and she rubbed them together for a minute.

“Rey,” Finn’s voice broke her out of the spiralling fear, “let me teach you a game.”

She looked up at him. His expression was soft yet insistent.

“Alright,” she finally said, “I’ll try.”

It turned out Rey was not great at Sabacc.

The game finally ended when a shudder ran down the ship and the hyperspace engine went quiet.

“This is it,” Rey said, standing up. She could sense the cold emptiness of the Unknown Regions around them.

“Probably for the best,” Poe quipped nervously, “you were losing all your money.”

“Drop the engine,” Kylo Ren ordered. Rey felt a brief jolt through the floor and with that the engine was gone. All they had now was the Yuuzhan Vong ship’s own propulsion and the Millenium Falcon sitting powered down inside.

Rey shoved her way through the crowd of stormtroopers to the front of the ship to look outside. The hard carapace that from the outside appeared shiny and black was inside a slightly dimmed screen.

Shining a short way off was the planet Ilum. From this distance she could see the pale glow of its snowy surface marred by a large black crack that wrapped around the center. And beyond Ilum, another shape loomed. It was massive, but she couldn’t get a sense of just how large. Like all of the Yuuzhan Vong’s ships, it was disorienting to look at without any signature in the Force.

But even just using her eyes, Rey could tell it was alive. While most of its outer shell seemed to be the blaster resistant coral, other parts of it were swelling and moving gently. The outside was ringed with a few undulating tendrils while the surface was covered in a complex network of veins, ridges, and a massive number of the lightly glowing organisms that produced the plasma fire.

“Take us closer,” Kylo Ren ordered and the First Order pilots who’d been given a crash course by the Yuuzhan Vong prisoner coaxed the ship forward.

Rey winced a little. Their flight was unsteady, clearly amature. They just had to hope none of the Yuuzhan Vong would expect them to try something like this and would write off the jolts as the result of damage.

The scale of the ship became more apparent as they drew closer.

“It’s almost a tiny world,” Rey marvelled as she looked up through the outer shell. “They must have been living on their ships for years.”

“We’ve got openings ahead,” one of the pilots reported. “A larger membrane and a smaller further up.”

“Try the smaller,” Kylo Ren ordered him.

“Rose, are you ready?” Rey asked over her shoulder.

“As soon as you’re in I’ll start working on disrupting those shields,” Rose confirmed.

The ship slowly descended towards the membrane, and to Rey’s relief it seemed to recognize the ship and peeled back to allow them in. For a few minutes the ship was entirely silent as they drifted down a tunnel.

And then finally, the tunnel ended. They were inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for bearing with me through this chapter's long and wild journey from angst to info dump to a bizarre hangout sequence featuring vaguely defined card games. Tune in next time as I attempt to write a really long sustained action sequence that definitely would be cool in a film, but remains to be seen if it will be cool in prose. 
> 
> Comments and kudos will receive the designation of Chosen One and I will dedicate my life to singing their great deeds across the nations of the world.


	14. Inferno

Rey looked up and around the Yuuzhan Vong baseship. They appeared to have entered into a small hanger. Most of the ships around them weren’t the coral fighters or transports, but small short range craft that were perhaps the Yuuzhan Vong equivalent of a shuttle.

And there were a few Yuuzhan Vong tending to them. Many of them were smaller than the warriors she’d mainly seen before. They sported some scarring, a few parts switched, but overall, the modifications they’d made were much more subtle. The majority of their warriors were likely out invading the galaxy, she thought, and what remained was a caste of workers. And of course, she thought, there were probably thousands of guards.

Their captured ship rattled a little as it dropped to the ground and Rey had to grab at the wall for balance. It was time to go.

Rose was already back in the Millenium Falcon, preparing her device to disrupt the shields.

“Leave half a squad to cover the room once we’re through,” Kylo Ren ordered, making his way back towards the door, “the rest of you with me.”

“Do we know which way to go from here?” Rey asked, following.

“The Yuuzhan Vong prisoner was unable to provide a complete map, but we have a rough outline and we know the Overlord is close to the center,” he replied. “Get your mechanic ready.”

As he spoke, General Organa appeared at the door of the Millenium Falcon.

“Geza, Dreimer, stay with Rose,” she ordered two of the Resistance fighters. “Hold the ship.”

She’d never trust them, Rey thought to herself, but perhaps that was for the best.

“Ready?” Rey asked as they waited in front of the door. A few of the Yuuzhan Vong workers were starting to eye their ship with suspicion.

“Almost,” Rose called from somewhere inside.

“We’ll clear the room and then she can take down the shields. Move out now,” Kylo Ren ordered and one of the stormtroopers triggered the carapace in front of them to slide open. He finally slid the helmet back over his head and she could feel immediately the way it changed him. He felt fiercer, colder, more resolved. Which, while normally bad, Rey found herself actually grateful for in the circumstances. She readied her lightsaber.

As soon as the doors were open, the stormtroopers opened fire. Without their armor, the Yuuzhan Vong fell quickly. Rey never even made it to one with her lightsaber before they were all dead.

It was a little chilling, she thought as she watched them clearing the rest of the hanger, to walk at the head of such an army. Instead of fighting with her desperation, she now wielded the power of the First Order.

General Organa, flanked by Finn and Poe, took the lead as soon as her fighters had all left the ship. Lando and Chewie took the rear guard and together with the First Order stormtroopers they moved to peer out of the door. The hall outside was empty, although it quickly twisted and hid anything further from sight. It was lit with the same soft glow as the interior of the transport ship.

“I don’t hear any alarms, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t set any off,” Leia said as she glanced out into the corridor.

“We should move quickly,” Kylo Ren said. With his face covered again, he and the general seemed to speak more easily. “Caution will only give them more time to find us.”

General Organa glanced back to the Millenium Falcon.

“How will we know the shields are down?” she asked.

As if in response, the entire room suddenly hummed with a massive swell of sound. Rey clapped her hands over her ears and then the walls around them seemed to squeeze in.

“I think that means they’re coming down!” Finn whooped.

The sound finally stopped and then after a long pause, Rose’s head poked out of doors of the ship.

“We’re sending the signal,” she yelled to them, “Phalius’ ships are ready to attack!”

“Go!” General Organa commanded, and all of them ran out into the hallway.

The interior of the Yuuzhan Vong ship was twisting and irregular which made it both more difficult to find their way, and easier to avoid detection in open spaces. As they raced forward, Rey felt blind. She was rushing into unseen danger without the Force to guide her or to warn her if something was going wrong.

And yet, remarkably, it wasn’t going wrong.

As soon as they reached the end of the corridor, all of them felt the ripple of a massive explosion on the outside of the ship. The First Order attack had started.

A few Yuuzhan Vong warriors came running down the passageway in response to the explosions, but they were quickly taken down by the combined blaster fire of the stormtroopers and the Resistance.

“Which way?” Leia asked as they came to an open spot where three different passages connected to their own. The stormtroopers quickly shot down a few more Yuuzhan Vong guards who came running at the sound of their voices.

Lando consulted a scanner.

“The center should be that way,” he gestured to a place roughly between two of the halls.

“We need to be moving faster than this,” Kylo Ren growled, “take the next Yuuzhan Vong alive and we’ll find a way to make it talk.”

Another shudder ran through the ship and the walls shivered like a living creature contracting in pain.

“At least she’s keeping them busy,” Finn murmured.

“We’ll take the central passage and hope it curves,” Leia decided and started down the slight incline.

Rey followed silently. Sweat was running down the small of her back. She felt hunted. There had to be more Yuuzhan Vong waiting inside. They couldn’t have all rushed to their ships already to engage the First Order.

The central passage proved to be a short one, however, and it ended in a large open room that seemed to be some sort of factory. Massive round tubes were set into the walls, and they seemed to be used to process a substance that smelled to Rey faintly savory. They must be drawing nutrients from down on Ilum, she thought, and processing them into something with the nematode-like creatures lining the walls.

The stormtroopers spread out into the room and opened fire on the Yuuzhan Vong. The workers began to run, while a few warriors attempted to rush them. Rey watched as one of the stormtroopers went down when a Yuuzhan Vong whip wrapped around his leg. But before the creatures could finish him off, they in turn were brought down by a wave of fire from Finn and Poe.

“Try this way,” Lando said, pointing to one of the passages on the side of the room.

The further in they got, the more Yuuzhan Vong they encountered. More and more of the guards seemed to be expected them as well.

While walking through a tall cavernous hallway of what appeared to be tanks of growing coral, they were ambushed. From behind the tanks, a legion of Yuuzhan Vong warriors tried to cut them off at the door.

For the first time, Rey ignited her lightsaber and found a target. She cleaved through one of the warriors at the neck gap in its armor and watched as the creature’s head rolled across the floor.

“Keep moving!” General Organa shouted and Rey turned to see that more Yuuzhan Vong warriors were pouring out of the side passages. “One squad hold the door!”

Rey sprinted for the doorway and as she passed, it quickly filled with a combined team of stormtroopers and Resistance fighters all shooting into the crowd of Yuuzhan Vong filling the room behind them.

“We’ve got to go faster than this,” Rey heard Poe shout as they all hurtled down the hallway, “or they’ll cut off every route! They know this ship!”

“Is the Force offering any guidance right now?” Finn yelled over to her as they ran.

“The Force is doing nothing right now!” she yelled back in frustration, “it’s like nothing. It’s like I’m running in an empty void! All I can feel is us!”

“Can’t you like… try to feel how far away the ships outside are and like triangulate our position or something?” Finn asked.

“That’s not how the Force works!” she snapped back.

They all skidded to a halt as they reached another intersection. This time there were five options, one of which was set into the floor rather than the walls. It had a thick mucousy membrane stretched across it unlike the previous doors they’d been down.

“I hate to say this,” Lando panted, “but I think we need to move down a few hundred feet.”

“Into the shoot then,” Leia said grimly, blasting a hole into the membrane. She peered down into the sloping tunnel. “Any takers?”

"I have a bad feeling about this," Finn said, assessing the look of the steep slope.

Chewbacca groaned and then leapt down first. Rey followed after the wookie. Inside, she felt herself sliding down a surface smoother than the rough coral of the ship’s outer shell. At first she couldn’t figure exactly what it was that they were in, but when she shot out of the end and into a massive pool of sludge, she quickly realized. The smell was potent, but strangely not as unpleasant as she’d feared.

Finn quickly splashed down next to her and floundered for a moment.

“I can’t believe this,” he muttered, wading towards her, “it’s like I can never leave the sanitation life behind me.”

Poe and several other Resistance fighters came shooting out next and Poe even let out a short whoop as he plunged down.

“Not a bad shortcut,” he said as he stood up. “Almost fun.”

General Organa somehow managed to come to a stop at the edge of the slide down and then lowered herself down into the slurry with dignity. After she was down, a long line of stormtroopers followed and began wading towards the walls where Rey could spot a low opening. Kylo Ren came last.

“More warriors,” he said shortly and she could see a few drops of black Yuuzhan Vong blood dripping from his sleeve, “we have to move faster.”

They waded through the sewage as fast as they could until they reached the opening in the wall.

“We’re getting close,” Lando informed them, “although I have no idea how we’re going to get out of here.”

The long low tunnel forced them to run at a crouch and while they occasionally spotted more tunnels curving up, there didn’t appear to be any more leading them back out.

“We should be almost to the center,” Lando said, staring down at the scanner, “but I don’t see any way out of this sewer.”

Kylo Ren answered the question nonverbally by igniting his lightsaber and driving it into the wall. Fluid began to pour out where he’d wounded the ship and the sides of the tunnel shivered a little.

“Well if they weren’t already following us, they certainly are now,” Poe said in alarm.

Rey, however, drew her own lightsaber and helped him to hack at the side of the wall. Finally, she plunged her arm in up to the elbow and saw light shining through from the other end.

Immediately, the rest of them began firing on the wall, and slowly they managed to pry open a jagged passage into another hallway.

As they staggered out through the tight opening, Rey took a moment to look around.

The part of the ship they were in now was wider, more brightly lit, and most importantly, much more crowded. As soon as she was through the wall, she found herself the subject of a lot of unwelcome attention.

The wide hall around them was filled with Yuuzhan Vong of various castes. Some of them were clearly guards in full armor and on high alert, while others were dressed in intricate designs and painted. Some of them had what appeared to be long appendages added to the backs of their heads like long, tentacle braids, and most of them had slaves at their sides.

She couldn’t look for long, however. After an oddly parallel moment of blinking at one another, the Yuuzhan Vong seemed to consider the fact that a filthy pair of humans armed with laser swords had just crawled out of the wall to be a threat. The guards rushed forward.

Rey and Kylo Ren turned back to back once again as their comrades struggled out of the narrow chink to join them. Unlike the skilled elegance with which they’d dispatched the praetorian guard, both of them had to fight wildly, with nothing but blind strength. She felt herself perfectly in sync with him, but as the Yuuzhan Vong warriors surrounded them, she was out of step.

One of the stormtroopers fell and Rey felt his neck crushed beneath the whip and his life slowly fade. Rey yelled and threw herself onto the Yuuzhan Vong warrior, bringing him down only with the weight of her body before plunging the lightsaber into his face.

Kylo Ren on the other hand, reached out and, with dispassionate efficiency, flung the dead stormtrooper into the crowd of Yuuzhan Vong like a horrifying makeshift projectile.

“Which way?” Rey yelled to Lando as they formed a circular defensive wall against the Yuuzhan Vong.

“We’re near the center!” Lando called back desperately, “But I can’t tell you where exactly the Overlord is from here!”

“Then we improvise,” General Organa shouted over the snarls of more Yuuzhan Vong guards racing to join the others. “Pick a door!”

One of the whips sliced into Rey’s leg and with a scream she felt herself falling. When she hit the ground she was winded for a moment and lay gasping.

Her mind reached out into the Force. They’d lost several more of their troops. She could no longer sense the one’s they’d left to hold the door behind them in the coral factory. Fear was the only current running through the dead air. Fear and shadows. She felt a surge of anger and then watched as the red lightsaber cleaved through the chest of the Yuuzhan Vong who had slashed her leg.

And then she felt something else.

There was something faint. But near. Just a tiny speck of something. She couldn’t feel what it was. But she felt the connection. Like a tiny star barely visible in a dark sky.

Something else in the ship was connected to the Force.

She felt Finn grab her hand and pull her back to her feet.

“That way!” she immediately yelled, pointing in the direction where she’d felt it. “We need to go that way!”

“How do you-?” Finn started, but then ducked out of the way of another whip. “Never mind! That way sounds great!”

Rey shoved her way through the line of guards and made a charge for the door. This one was covered by another of the black carapaces, but she slashed through it by stabbing at the edges until she could knock it open with her shoulder.

She felt others behind her, but she couldn’t tell how many anymore. Some of them would have to stay and hold the hallway.

Then she reached another massive doorway. This one was already ajar.

Rey turned back to her companions.

“I’m going in,” she said to Finn and Poe. “But I need you to cover the door.”

Chewbacca roared in agreement and crouched down to fire back at the Yuuzhan Vong warriors pursuing them. Lando was trying to reseal the door Rey had broken through to prevent more of them from forcing their way into the hall and pinning them in.

“Yell if you need backup,” Poe said, clasping her briefly on the shoulder. “You can do this.”

“She’ll have some backup,” General Organa said, readying her own blaster.

“Be careful!” Finn yelled over his shoulder as he hoisted his weapon.

Kylo Ren said nothing, but kicked the massive door in front of them further open and the two of them walked inside shoulder to shoulder.

The room was large, with a high domed ceiling covered in a shifting pattern of glowing light. The walls were decorated in the swirling hypnotic patterns she’d seen on their ships and armor, although these were grown to be far more complex. In the center of the room was a raised dais upon which were gathered at least twenty massive Yuuzhan Vong warriors.

They were all heavily modified, although their scars were smaller and neater. Clearly the work had been done by the most skilled hands they possessed.

Around the edges of the room were dozens of the Shamed Ones. Their heads were all facing downward and they did not look up even at the sound of Rey and Kylo Ren bursting through the door.

One of the Shamed Ones was kneeling on the floor and applying what appeared to be some form of paint to the feet of a massive Yuuzhan Vong. It was the largest in the room, and instead of the usual black armor, it was wearing a much more complicated and richly embellished exoskeleton of bright gold.

“We are here to petition Overlord Shimrra Jamaane,” General Organa said, stepping between Rey and Kylo Ren, “to withdraw the Yuuzhan Vong army which illegal occupies the planets of our galaxy. If these conditions are met, we are willing to negotiate a treaty to spare the lives of the Yuuzhan Vong.”

The Yuuzhan Vong warriors merely stared at them for a moment. Then the largest one in the golden armor, who was ostensibly the Overlord, began to laugh.

“To look upon Shimrra, beloved of the Gods, and to be found impure is to be condemned to suffer without the gift of death,” one of the warriors on the dais said, stepping down towards them. “You have cost your entire people the Overlord’s mercy.”

“If that’s your official statement then...” Leia said, “I’m perfectly happy to still offer you the gift of death.”

As she spoke, she fired her blaster towards the Overlord. With a slow, almost bored wave of its arm, the bolt deflected off of the golden armor and fizzled into nothing in the air.

Rey glanced over at Kylo Ren. While his face was still hidden, she could feel his intentions radiating out from him. In unison, they moved forward like a pack of animals closing on their kill.

Then everything began to move very fast.

General Organa was laying down a wide circle of blaster fire towards the dais as the Yuuzhan Vong warriors surged towards them. These ones wielded a longer version of the serpentine amphistaff weapons. They seemed to at will change from spears to whips that moved with their own volition. Rey ducked under one of them and then flipped sideways to avoid another jab. She had to make it to the Overlord and end this before they were all dead.

One of the warriors managed to wrap the end of the whip around her wrist and yanked her forward. She thrust the lightsaber out and wound it once around the whip, letting the amphistaff crackle and spark against the blade, pulling backwards as hard as she could. As soon as she saw the Yuuzhan Vong warrior getting ready to yank her in, she stopped straining and threw herself forward until the lightsaber was buried in its gut.

She spotted another warrior out of the corner of her eye and she quickly spun her lightsaber around, flinging the remains of the amphistaff into its face to allow Kylo Ren the time to give it a swift kick to the back of the knees and then a slice to remove its head.

Rey blocked another blow from one of warriors, this one using the amphistaff as a long, wicked spear and circling just out of her range. She felt the brief touch of something coming up behind her to finish her off, when suddenly one of Leia’s laser blasts connected with its face and the Yuuzhan Vong slumped down at her feet.

With a furious cry, Rey ran forward and allowed herself to skid on her knees under the jab of the spear so that she could slash off one of the Yuuzhan Vong’s hands.

It barely flinched from the pain and instead, brought its elbow smashing into her face. She fell backwards, spitting blood out of her mouth and fumbled to get her lightsaber up in time to block the next blow.

The Yuuzhan Vong bashed the spear down onto her again and again and she felt her strength failing under the onslaught.

But then she felt something drag her back and upright to her feet.

She stood back to back again with Kylo Ren.

“Go for the Overlord,” he yelled to her.

She glanced over and saw that he hadn’t faired well either. There was a bleeding gash on one of his arms and part of the helmet was cracked from a blow of the whip. She could feel the fury emanating from him. He was drawing from it, using it to make himself into a fighter of pure aggression without anything reserved for self defense.

Overlord Shimrra had retreated back to the dais, but Rey saw that the Overlord was at least distracted by fending off a nearly constant barrage of laser fire from General Organa.

She jumped up onto the dais beside Shimrra and they circled one another for a moment, sizing each other up. This one was massive, she noted, much stronger than her and more heavily armored. Her best bet was to wait until it made a mistake, but there wasn’t time for that.

As she looked over its shoulder she could see Kylo Ren taking on the remaining warriors five against one. A Yuuzhan Vong jabbed at him with a spear and he managed to seize it before it reached his neck, but the spear abruptly shifted back into the flexible whip and wrapped around his hand. He slashed at the others with his lightsaber as he strained against the Yuuzhan Vong warrior, trying to rip the weapon away from it.

In front of her, Shimrra hefted a massive amphistaff and Rey prepared should the Overlord try to throw it. Instead Shimrra gave it a gentle shake and it curled towards her, undulating in the air in front of her so that any move she made would give it a chance to strike.

She extended the blade of her lightsaber towards it and then struck. The saber deflected off of its hide, but she wasn’t interested in decapitating it. Instead, she noticed that where she had hit, the sentient weapon had frozen up back into a hard spear for defense. Heart pounding, she backed off for a moment.

Behind her she could feel Kylo Ren’s pain as he let the whip slide off of his hand, leaving a deep gash in the palm. Still, he squeezed his fist and then rapidly kicked the Yuuzhan Vong warrior off of its feet while plunging his lightsaber into the exposed knee of another. She could feel Leia’s strength feeding into her own as she distracted Shimrra with another laser to the back of its armor.

Rey launched herself forward, using quick short blows to keep the whip rigid enough that she could get in closer without getting struck. Shimrra snarled.

The Overlord’s face up close was nightmarish. Its eyes were black around the edges with a deep red iris surrounding the pupil. Teeth had been added not just to the mouth, but lining the cheekbones and the bridge of its nose to transform even the Overlord’s face into a weapon. Worst of all, it was grinning.

“What a pretty toy,” Shimrra growled, considering her lightsaber as it glanced off of a wrist guard, “but a dead thing cannot defeat what is alive in me.”

Rey let out a wordless scream and let her anger move her arms faster and faster as she slashed and ducked and blocked. The Overlord beat her back with the spear so hard she felt her arms shivering under the strain and while she was distracted, it managed to give her a deep slice across the collarbone with one of the jagged wrist guards.

She surged forward again, this time hoping to surprise Shimrra with a low jab up to the face. Not quick enough.

Rey felt the end of the whip wrap around her lightsaber hand and a burn as it smacked against her elbow. Her whole arm was caught.

“Please,” she begged, not sure to whom.

She could see Kylo Ren behind the Overlord's shoulder. He had managed to force another warrior to drop its weapon, but the creature had wrapped his neck into a choke hold with one oversized arm. He struggled to get out before the others could impale him with a spear by flipping his opponent over his shoulder and smashing his head into the Yuuzhan Vong’s. Ripping off the remains of the helmet, she saw him scrambling back as the other three warriors closed in.

Slowly Rey felt her arm begin to move. Shimrra was bending it back towards her, bringing the lightsaber blade closer and closer to her face. She could feel its heat against her cheek. If she gave up another inch, it would cut right through her skull.

The Overlord pulled the whip tighter and she felt her arm beginning to give out. Her vision was filled with the green glow and her ears buzzed with the hum of it. She was going to be killed by something she’d built.

“See now how the impure technology turns upon the master,” Shimrra chuckled.

“It turns alright,” Rey snarled, “I built it that way.

She let her arm move another centimeter so that she felt the lightsaber blade burning against her cheek, and then she squeezed another button.

The other side of the lightsaber ignited.

Another beam of green light shot out in the other direction, transforming the weapon from a long sword into a long deadly staff. Rey pushed her arm forward with everything she had left in her and the opposing end of the lightsaber sank into Overlord Shimrra’s face.

The whip relaxed and then fell, leaving behind an ugly red burn on her arm, but allowing her to move the lightsaber forward to prevent it from doing more damage to her own face.

The corpse of the Yuuzhan Vong Overlord sank onto the floor with a groan. Rey panted for a moment, her whole body shaking. But it wasn't over yet. She had to keep going.

She jumped down from the dais and, twirling the double sided lightsaber with a practiced skill, she finished off the last two Yuuzhan Vong warriors. Kylo Ren stared up at her from the ground where he lay, breathing heavily and almost in awe.

“You didn’t think to use that earlier?” General Organa said, joining them from her position on the edge of the room. She was also staring up at Rey with that same look of amazement.

“I didn’t know if it would work…” Rey managed to say as she caught her breath, “I wasn’t sure I’d built it so that the crystal could handle it.”

“You…” Kylo Ren started to say but he seemed unable to find the words, “it’s done. We should go while we can.”

Rey nodded, and dabbed gently at the mixture of blood and sweat running down her face with her sleeve. All she had to do now was get them back out. She could do it.

But before she could move towards the door she felt something unseen jerk her backwards. Her back hit the wall hard and her vision swam into a grey blur.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit it is so hard to describe the lightsaber battles my head imagines with words. But at the very least, I did finally fit in an "I've got a bad feeling about this." Tune in next time for revelations! We're in the home stretch and I intend to sprint it! 
> 
> Leave me a comment and I'll think of a creative bribe to give you!


	15. Ashes

It took her eyes a moment to refocus. The back of her head ached from the blow and when she tried to push herself forward, her limbs were heavy and immobile. Rey was pinned.

She blinked rapidly a few times and gritted her teeth to remain conscious. There was someone else in the room. She could feel it this time. She was connected to it. Or _he_ this time. Giving the creature that pronoun felt right now.

One of the Shamed Ones stood up.

He was small and ugly. His stature was stooped and shuffling while his face was bulbous, doughy, and distorted. He walked slowly into the center of the room and picked up the amphistaff that Shimrra had dropped.

“I suppose I should thank you,” he said in a gentle, soft voice, “Shimrra was beginning to chafe a bit against me. And the others, well, they were always urging him to renounce his little pet, his favorite jester.”

“Who are you?” Rey managed to ask through clenched teeth.

The Shamed One turned towards her. She could see through her peripheral vision that Kylo Ren was also held tightly against the wall while General Organa was crouched near the door.

“My name is Onimi. Former Master Shaper of the fleet, although you may notice I have fallen rather far,” he said with a self-effacing laugh. “Still, Yun-Harla can be a capricious goddess. Who am I to question her will in bringing me to this state?”

“The Force,” Rey said, putting it together, “you somehow connected yourself to the Force and they made you a Shamed One.”

“They declared me Shamed with the Ungodly power, so I took over the mind of their Overlord,” Onimi said carelessly, “it seemed only fair.”

“How?” Rey asked, “I thought the Yuuzhan Vong had removed themselves from the Force?”

“We Shapers do like to try things out,” Onimi said, and she felt a sudden pressure in her ears as he drew closer. He was powerful. Almost monumentally strong with the Force. “I decided to add on a bit of yammosk tissue to my 8th cortex, although I doubt you even understand what that means.”

“I know it means we’re connected,” Rey pleaded, “and you can stop this. You can end this war and free the Shamed Ones. And I can help you.”

“It means I am Overlord. It means I am the worldship itself. It means I can have anything I want,” Onimi said, his voice nearly a whisper. One of his fingers traced down her injured cheek. “And because we are, as you put it, connected, I’d like you. Just a few pieces, you won’t mind. I can just feel all that power inside… and pardon me if I just can’t resist.”

“Don’t,” Rey said sharply. She locked eyes with Onimi and tried to overwhelm him with as much persuasion as she could put into the word. “You’ll stop this and let us leave.”

“I’m very sorry little creature,” Onimi said, shaking his head, “but I have plans to complete. And you’re simply… too convenient.”

Onimi reached out, about to move her, but at the same moment they both felt the wave of furious intention from Kylo Ren across the room as he managed to tear himself away from the wall and lunge a few feet forward.

Onimi turned and stopped him midstep.

“We can’t have that,” the Yuuzhan Vong said, and then with long undulating movements of his fingers, began to squeeze.

Rey could feel the life draining from Kylo Ren across the room and no matter how much she hated him for what he’d done, she couldn’t help but cry out as she felt it.

His hair fell across his blood spattered face, but for a moment she could see the fear in his eyes as Onimi crushed his throat.

“No!” someone shouted.

General Organa had stood up and she was firing her blaster rapidly at Onimi. While he stopped most of them in midair, one of them grazed his wrist and Rey could feel the Yuuzhan Vong recoil with pain.

“Don’t you touch him!” General Organa was screaming as she fired again and again, “Don’t you dare!”

Rey felt herself slide down from the wall as Onimi was distracted. A wave of panic was washing over her. She couldn’t bare to comprehend it, but on some level, she knew.

She wouldn’t get there in time.

Then Onimi turned to Leia and with a faint, derisive snarl, snapped her neck.

She fell gracefully.

Rey could no longer tell what was happening other than that she was screaming louder than she ever had before. She ran towards where Leia’s body had fallen without care or attention for anything else. But she knew already. She could feel it.

The general was gone.

She heard someone else screaming and for a moment she was so overwhelmed with it that she saw him in double, once with her eyes and once in her mind.

Kylo Ren, now free from his chokehold, had launched himself at Onimi. He was wild, completely unhinged, his last tenuous thread of control snapped.

“Ben, run!” Rey sobbed, knowing again that she would fail, “you have to run!”

Snot and tears were pouring down her face as she reached Leia’s fallen body. She turned back one more time and saw Onimi quickly disarm him. But even then he didn’t run.

“Ben!” she tried one more time, before the Yuuzhan Vong seized him in midair and paralyzed his limbs.

Rey looked back and then down at the general’s body.

And then she ran.

She left them both behind and ran back into the hallway.

She ran through the battle and past Finn and past Poe and past Chewbacca and Lando and past the remaining stormtroopers and the few remaining Resistance fighters who were holding the corridor. Her eyes were burning so she couldn’t even see where she was going.

“Rey!” someone was yelling from behind her. “Rey, stop!”

But she couldn’t. She cut down two Yuuzhan Vong guards trying to come through the barricaded door at the end of the hall and then kicked it open.

She fought and screamed and ran until she no longer knew where she was anymore. She gave herself fully to the rage and the panic.

And then finally she felt herself swaying on her feet, and a pair of arms folded around her and she let herself lie down for a moment and rest against some cold piece of unknown floor. She was filthy, wounded, exhausted beyond anything she’d ever felt before. Let it be over, she thought, please just let it all be over.

 

***

Rose sat methodically polishing the blaster lying on her lap and waiting. Her stomach hurt she was so anxious and each second seemed to stretch into a thousand. Please let them be alright, she thought again and again, shouldn’t they have gotten in contact by now?

“Anything yet?” she asked and then winced when Captain Geza shook her head for the third time in the last minute.

“We should send out a scout,” Rose said, finally standing up. “They’re late checking in.”

A few of the stormtroopers glanced at her but said nothing.

“We could call the destroyer into position,” Dreimer said, the other Resistance pilot who’d stayed behind. “Give the Yuuzhan Vong more to fight off and make their way out clearer.”

“No talking,” the stormtrooper squad leader, SP-012K, replied.

“This is ridiculous!” Rose finally cried, “your Supreme Leader is in there! Your fellow soldiers! Why aren’t we doing anything?”

“I said no talking,” the squad leader said again.

Rose sat back down, unable to stop her hands from shaking as she continued polishing the blaster.

“Listen, I know you have orders, but can’t you call your commanders and at least ask?” Captain Geza asked one of the stormtroopers.

Rose didn’t know exactly why, but she was starting to feel a little sick.

While the stormtroopers were distracted with Geza, she slid quietly back into the Millenium Falcon and made her way to the cockpit. She cast a quick sad glance at BB-8 propped powered down against the wall.

Just to make sure, she checked all the scanners to see if they’d missed any communications or if there was any chatter from the First Order ships outside.

There was nothing.

Not just nothing, though, she thought, complete and total silence.

Knowing she had to act quickly, she opened up every panel she could find until she managed to grab a few short range comlinks that could be stuffed into her jumpsuit. She spared one final look for BB-8 and felt her heart dropping into her stomach at the thought of what she had to do. Rose walked back out as quickly as she could and grabbed Dreimer by the arm. The Twi’lek man flinched a little at the roughness, but as soon as he saw the urgency on her face, he allowed himself to be led back into the ship.

“They’re jamming our signal,” Rose whispered as soon as they were out of sight. “We have to get out and find the others.”

“That’s insane,” Dreimer whispered back, “why would they jam a signal from their own Supreme Leader?”

“I don’t know, but we need to get out of here now!” Rose urged him as loudly as she dared.

“Hey, could I get a hand out here?” Geza’s voice called from outside, and Dreimer immediately moved to help before Rose could grab his hand or stop him.

As soon as they walked back out onto the ramp every stormtrooper had turned their blasters against them. One of them had Geza’s head in a chokehold with a blaster pressed to her temple.

“Please don’t do this,” Rose said slowly, “we’re on the same side.”

“Sorry,” the squad leader said, “new orders from the top.”

A new voice crackled suddenly through all of the comms Rose had been checking for the past hour.

“Eject the Resistance fighters from the ship and return to the destroyer,” a calm male voice said, “we’re pulling out of the system.” She recognized the voice of one of the First Order generals. That older man, she thought, Avadear.

“Your Supreme Leader is still aboard the ship!” Rose said furiously. “You have to send someone in for extraction!”

“Ah, well,” Avadear’s voice sighed, “I suppose we’ll need another Supreme Leader. Pity he couldn’t let himself be tamed. Such a waste. It ought to make Hux happy at least.”

Rose turned to the stormtroopers.

“I’m begging you not to listen to these orders,” she pleaded, “you have to know this is breaking the chain of command, that this is your generals making a coup!”

“Out of the ship,” the squad leader said, pointing his weapon at Rose. The others hesitantly followed suit. If she could just get through to them. They didn’t want to leave either.

“Let me talk to Phalius,” Rose suddenly said, “if I could just talk to her she’d listen…”

“All ships have already pulled out of the sector but yours,” Avadear interrupted. “Shoot them if they delay take off any longer.”

Dreimer jumped forward, trying to get to Rose’s blaster where she’d left it on the ramp, but a wave of fire took him down before his hands could close around it. Rose ducked down and crawled for the door. She never saw what happened to Geza.

One stormtrooper saw her as she reached the outer membrane of the ship and raised his blaster. She froze and looked up at him. She tried to imagine his face beneath the mask. He must be as afraid as she was.

Then he pushed the door open and let her go.

Rose rolled out onto the floor of the hanger and scrambled back as the ship stirred to life. She made it to the edge of another ship before the stolen Yuuzhan Vong vessel had lifted off with the Falcon and BB-8 still inside of it.

And then the roar of the ship died away and she was left alone. No weapon. No ship. No backup.

She took a moment to press her hands into her eyes and let a few frustrated sobs out. Even if she could find the others now she was useless to them. They had no way to escape and no way to contact any of the Resistance for help. For all she knew, the First Order had turned on all of them by now and shot them out of the sky. Or perhaps they were simply letting the Resistance ships get shot down by the Yuuzhan Vong before sweeping in to clean up the remainder.

As she stared down at the comlink she’d managed to steal, short ranged and barely able to make contact with someone on the other side of an asteroid, she felt the last remaining flicker of hope dying inside of her. This was the end for her. All she could wish for was that it would be peaceful. And maybe that she wouldn’t have to be alone.

“This is Rose Tico calling anyone listening,” she said shakily into the comlink, “can anyone hear me?”

Nothing but quiet static.

Fine then, she thought, she had time. She could sit here and try every frequency. But she would find them eventually.

“Rose?” a staticy voice said from the comlink, so quiet she could barely hear it. “This is Lando Calrissian. We’re trying to get to you, but we’ve lost the signal from the ship.”

Rose clutched at the comlink and pressed it close to her chest.

“The ship is…” she started, but then stopped herself, “Just follow the signal to me.”

 

***

“Rey come on!”

“Please, Rey, just say something!”

From very far away she could hear someone calling to her. But they couldn’t get to her. Not in here. She was safe for now inside the hollowed out body of a fallen AT-AT. Even if they got inside she had her staff. She could ride out the night even in the event of a sandstorm.

“Rey, we need you back, okay? I need you to come back and find me.”

She looked up at the wall, at the hundreds of scratch marks. No one ever came back, did they? She was waiting here for her death. Why not just jump on a ship and get out of here? Why worry about staying safe in her metal box when it was just as likely to serve as her coffin?

“Come on, come back to me.”

She felt someone’s arms still holding her. Her body hurt and she leaned her head down until it was pressed into something warm. Finn. Finn was cradling her in his arms.

She slowly looked up and tried to take in the room around her. Concerned faces filled her vision. Poe with a nasty slash on the side of his head that had apparently taken some of his ear with it. Chewbacca with blood matting his fur. Lando with one arm haphazardly bandaged and curled against his body. And Rose, looking pale and scared.

“Where are we?” she finally asked in a small voice.

“You’re in the hanger again,” Finn said gently, “still on the baseship. You got us out before you fainted and the rest of the stormtroopers turned on us before we could get to the ship. We’re all that’s left.”

“Rey, please,” Poe said, his voice cracking, “what happened? Please, where is the general?”

“I killed the Overlord,” Rey said faintly. It didn’t feel real anymore. Please let it not be real anymore. “But it was a trap. Shimrra was a puppet for a Force-sensitive Yuuzhan Vong. And the general… the general she-”

Rey felt herself unable to say the word. Her breathing started to accelerate again and Finn began rubbing a few small circles on her back.

“She what?” Poe asked, tears streaming down his face.

“It was over in just a second, I tried, I tried-” Rey gasped, “and then I left him… I left Ben… I just ran.”

Poe seemed unable to contain himself and stood up, walking a few paces away before lurching down against a Yuuzhan Vong shuttle and putting his head between his knees. Chewbacca let out a long low moan of misery.

“You did everything you could, Rey, it’s not your fault,” Finn soothed her as she tried to calm her breathing.

Lando stared down at his blaster for a few seconds in silence and then flung it across the room.

“I warned you all!” he howled, “I told you, it never changes, we just fall for it again and again! We could have been lightyears away from here and we could have kept each other safe! But you wouldn’t listen, you never-”

Rose shut him up quickly with a right hook. Seeming a little stunned, he slumped down onto the floor.

“They’re going to find us soon,” Rose said firmly, “if one of the Yuuzhan Vong really has the Force he’ll find Rey soon enough. We could try to capture one of the Shamed Ones maybe, ask it to teach us so we could fly one of these ships out.”

“Even if we could find a Yuuzhan Vong that would help us, Rose, they’ll blow us out of the sky. We have no way to navigate the Unknown Regions in a ship like that. We don’t even know how to fire their weapons,” Finn said quietly, shaking his head. “We need backup.”

“Well, we don’t have back up. We don’t have a ship. We don’t have the First Order or the Resistance. We just have us,” Rose snapped back. “I’m trying to figure something out so anyone here is welcome to help me!”

She began scanning through channels on her comlink again. Nothing was in range. Just blank static. They couldn’t even reach the satellites around Ilum from here, let alone a Resistance ship.

“They left us behind,” Rey said in the silence after her outburst. “There’s no one coming. This is it.”

Rose looked at her and Rey could see the last veneer of bravery crumbling away as she watched even the heroic Jedi give up. A few tears rolled down the mechanic’s cheeks.

Rey closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall behind her. If this was it, let it come faster. She didn’t want to wait around with her thoughts.

“So we just have us,” Finn said, standing up and speaking to the whole room, “...I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have.”

“There’s no way out of here,” Rey said flatly, “so either we wait until they find us and then we kill as many as we can before they slaughter us, or you shoot me now yourself.”

“Stop it,” Finn said sharply “we always knew we might be risking everything. Nothing’s changed. I don’t want to spend my last moments in despair.”

Rey looked up at him and felt her eyes fill with tears. Finn who always came back for her. Her best friend. Her first friend. She’d let him down.

“I’m so sorry,” she finally choked out, “I should never have brought you here with me.”

“Well, I can’t say it was fun,” Finn said with a half-smile, “but I wouldn’t have stayed behind for anything.”

Rey started to smile back, but then a white hot pain unlike anything she’d ever experienced before knocked her onto the floor.

When she managed to sit up she could see a body lying in front of her.

They’d removed the outer layers of his clothing and she could see now how much blood had been pouring out from the wound in his side. His face, however, was cleaned. His pale skin free of blood and sweat and his long dark hair held back from his face. His eyes darted back and forth and she could see various long tubes connected to the veins on his arms and his neck.

“Rey!” he said when he saw her.

“Ben, you’re alive,” she gasped.

“Onimi took me when you ran,” he said frantically, “I’m still somewhere in the central hub, there’s more of them here, the Shapers.”

“I’m coming,” Rey said immediately, “I’m going to get you out.”

But she knew he could feel how empty the promise was.

“Where…” he began, and she could feel him starting to tremble slightly, “where are the ships?”

“They’re gone,” Rey admitted tearfully, “Ben, they already left. I’m so sorry.”

“Please,” he said and she could see now that his composure was fracturing, “please stay with me.”

“I’m right here,” she said, and clasped his hand. Finally. She laced her fingers with his and squeezed tightly. “I’m going to stay right here.”

“They’re coming now,” he said, his eyes focusing on something she couldn’t see. “Rey, please don’t go. Please don’t go.”

“I’m here, I promise,” she said, wrapping her other hand around his as well, “it’s going to be okay.”

She could feel his heart rate accelerating. Usually he barely winced at pain, but something now was frightening him. Rey could feel it. Someone else was there. It had to be Onimi now.

“No, please, don’t,” he said to someone she couldn’t see, “don’t!”

“Don’t worry, I’m here,” Rey said again and again, “look at me, okay? Just focus on me.”

He turned his head back towards her for a second. His dark eyes were wide and panicked.

“No, no, no,” he said again and she felt him convulse a little with pain.

“It’s okay,” Rey said again trying to soothe him, “when you’re with the Force you can come to me. Like Luke. Like your Grandfather. Death is just a change.”

“I’m not-” he gasped, looking at her with pure terror, “he’s not going to kill me.”

Rey stared at him for a moment as the realization hit her.

And then suddenly nothing was there. She was kneeling on the ground squeezing the empty air. He was completely and totally gone. No one. Nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof. It kinda hurt to even write this one. Sorry about the bleakness. Have a nice day.


	16. Flicker

Poe Dameron looked up and tried swiping at his blurry eyes. Rey was rocking back and forth in the middle of the floor now, clasping her hands in front of her and staring into space. She looked utterly defeated, he thought, which was just how he felt. Because if Leia Organa was dead, then all hope was gone with her.

He knew he was being irrational. That under other circumstances he might have kept his composure, mourned like a soldier, picked himself up and carried on. But here and now he had no strength left to do it.

He let his head fall back down to his knees. His chest hurt from crying and his throat was hoarse. As he buried his head in his arms, something hard knocked against his collarbone.

With one hand he grabbed it to stop it from swinging. It was his mother’s ring. Hard and cold against his throat. He’d worn it for so long, through so many battles, and yet this was the first time it had bothered him to carry it around his neck.

Poe looked up again and tried to compose himself as he considered the ring in his hand. It was slightly dulled. He should have polished the silver more often. Gently, he lifted the chain from around his neck and let the ring rest in his hand.

“Hey Finn,” he called, ignoring what the rest of them were doing, “want to get married?”

He looked up. If nothing else, his comment had at least provided some distraction.

Rose was no longer scanning through the channels. Lando had stopped repeatedly kicking at the wall. Rey looked up from her trance-like revery. Even Chewbacca let out a faintly curious growl.

And Finn was just staring at him.

“Come on, just take it,” Poe shrugged, holding out the ring, “it was my mom’s. And it doesn’t look like I’ll get a chance later.”

He stood up, ignoring the aches and the bruises and walked over to where Finn was kneeling beside Rey. He squatted down next to him and held out the ring and the chain.

“Well?” Poe asked nervously, “don’t leave me hanging here, buddy.”

Finn rolled his eyes.

“I cannot believe this,” he groaned, “this is already probably the worst marriage proposal of all time and then you had to go and make it worse by tossing in a ‘buddy.’”

“Hey… what is happening?” Rey asked.

“Get over it Rey, you’re literally the only person in the galaxy who hasn’t noticed this,” Rose grumbled with uncharacteristic bluntness. Chewbacca roared in agreement.

“Wait, are you seriously declining my marriage proposal when we’re about to die?” Poe asked in confusion, “this is like… a no fail situation right now.”

“Well, guess what, ‘buddy,’” Finn said with sarcasm, “you’re still failing. Of course I’m not going to accept a half-assed proposal in a disgusting Yuuzhan Vong hanger when we’ve made out, like, twice.”

“Seriously?” Rey said, glancing around the room, “they made out twice?”

“She’s worse than Luke,” Lando said, shaking his head. “As the master, so the apprentice.”

“Yeah, but I love you!” Poe protested, “I mean, under other circumstances this would be way better. There would be fireworks. Maybe an airshow.”

“How can I be sure that if we all got rescued right now by a magical ghost ship or something, you wouldn’t take this ring right back?” Finn asked. “How can I be sure this isn’t just some strange byproduct of adrenaline and grief?”

Poe produced a long sigh of exasperation.

“Rey could you please just read my mind or something so he knows I’m serious?” he asked.

“I have no more ways left to explain to you that the Force doesn’t really do that,” Rey sighed. “The Force connects us all, but it would take all my power and more right now to try to put myself into another person’s thoughts.”

“If Luke managed to project his entire body halfway across the galaxy,” Lando suggested, “I’m sure you can manage to give these two a little peace of mind.”

“Wait,” Rose said.

Poe stared at her blankly. Then the realization hit him like a bolt of electricity.

“Oh!” he exclaimed and in his excitement he couldn’t resist seizing both Finn and Rey by the hands.

“It won’t work,” Rey sighed, “I’m not strong enough.”

“Wait, catch me up,” Lando said, startled by the sudden energy that had returned to the room. The feeling of doom had peeled back just a tiny bit.

“What if Rey could project herself across the galaxy and call for help,” Poe said, “just like Luke did!”

“I’m telling you I can’t!” Rey fired back, “Luke had been practicing for years! Even then, the effort cost him his life.”

“But you don’t need to project yourself physically,” Finn suggested, “we just need to get the message to the Resistance, or to anyone! We just need you to be the signal.”

“What if we helped you?” Rose suggested. “You could, I don’t know, use our strength or something?”

“We might not have the Force or anything, but we want to help,” Poe assured her.

Rey seemed ready to protest again, but then a faint crease formed between her eyebrows.

“That’s the look!” Finn whooped, “that’s the genius Rey look!”

“No, stop it,” she waved him away, “just let me think. What did you say?”

She pointed at Poe.

“I mean… I just meant that we’re here for you,” Poe said uncertainty, “even if we aren’t Jedi and we don’t have any Force stuff. Really, I just was trying to be encouraging, you know, kind of inspirational.”

“You are connected to the Force, though,” Rey said, nodding slowly to herself, “you all are. It’s the Yuuzhan Vong who have no connection, but all of you… well, the only real difference between you and me is that you don’t notice it.”

“Are you saying that we…” Finn said, gesturing to all of them who had now gathered into a circle around the Jedi, “could use the Force if we knew how?”

“Well, I’m not really sure if anyone without a natural gift has ever actually learned,” Rey admitted, “but now seems like an alright time to try. If I’m… guiding you there… maybe we could be strong enough together.”

“Do we need to hold hands?” Lando asked as they arranged themselves around Rey.

“Probably don’t need to,” Poe said, “but definitely ought to.”

“Close your eyes,” Rey said, “and breathe. Just breathe.”

Poe let his eyes close. He felt the hair on his neck prickle. They were still exposed and in danger and this was just a tiny bit ridiculous. As they were breathing, he managed to press the ring still in his hand into Finn’s.

“Now, reach out,” Rey said.

They sat in silence for a moment.

“I, um, I thought I felt something,” Rose said, “like maybe a tickling on my arm?”

Chewbacca made an apologetic growl.

“Oh, nope, nothing then,” Rose confirmed.

“Try to just imagine…” Rey said, searching for words, “just imagine something surrounding you. Something that’s also inside of you. That is you. Try to feel yourself in the person next to you. It’s the light inside of you. But it’s also the pain. And they’re connected and they’re inside of me too. It’s not something that lifts a rock. It’s when you understand how the rock is connected to everything else. Even in the empty spaces between things. It’s still there. It’s that something.”

Poe squeezed Finn’s hand a little tighter. And he did try to imagine them connected. He could feel the heat from his palm moving into Finn’s. And he tried to feel Finn’s cold fingers receiving his warmth.

“Breathe it in and you also breathe it out,” Rey said softly, “it’s the thing that means you aren’t alone even when you are. Because you are the Force and it is you and if you are one with the Force, you are everything. Think about how you feel when you’re all alone, but you aren’t afraid. Think about how your chest expands when you see the sky at night. Think about how a person who is gone is still right there inside of you sometimes.”

Poe squeezed tighter with his hands until it hurt. And with his eyes closed it was easy to pretend that when he opened them she’d be there again. Leia would be sitting across from him and she’d be smiling a little although she’d raise her eyebrow disapprovingly and say something like ‘really Dameron, you went for a proposal?’ She’s there right now, he told himself, I can feel her there right now.

Then beside him, Rey gasped.

But confusingly, his lungs felt like it had been him. Maybe it had been him? He could feel Finn’s heartbeat with the fingers he had pressed against his wrist and it was perfectly in sync with his own.

“You’re doing it,” Rey said and Poe found it hard not to mouth the words along with her. “Finn, you’re… amazing. And Poe, there’s a little coming from you too. And Chewie… it’s like having new eyes… And Rose… you should be trained…”

“Not enough over here?” Lando asked. “I promise I’m trying.”

“Stay with me,” Rey murmured, “stay with me while I reach out.”

Then, even though his eyes were still closed, Poe felt himself jolted forward and speeding out of his body. It was so vast. So unknowably large he wanted to pull back. But he couldn’t pull back, not yet.

“Please be out here somewhere,” Rey was murmuring in his ears, maybe even with his mouth, “please hear us. We need you to help us. We need ships at Ilum to take down the baseship. Please hear me and come. You’re our only hope.”

And then just as suddenly as it had started, Poe felt himself slammed back down into his own body and mind. His eyes snapped open and he jerked forward, coughing a little as his body remembered how to breathe.

“Did we do it?” Finn panted beside him, also looking towards Rey.

“I don’t know,” Rey said, her voice shaking a little from the effort, “we went pretty far. But I don’t know if anyone could hear us.”

“So we wait and see,” Rose said, but Rey shook her head.

“You should stay here,” she said, “but I’m going back. I need to kill Onimi and try to save Ben.”

“Sorry, who is Ben?” Rose asked.

“Oh man, they really should have filled you in on this earlier,” Lando groaned.

Poe glanced towards Finn who looked down suddenly to notice that he had indeed accepted the ring into his hand. Poe raised his eyebrows and Finn reluctantly started to smile.

“Might as well go with,” Poe said, bringing his face to Finn’s for a brief final kiss, “seeing as we’re all connected or whatever.”

 

***

Lieutenant Phalius slammed back into her chair with a gasp. For some reason, a tear was running down her face and she blinked it away quickly.

“Stop the ships,” she managed to croak into her helmet comlink. “Wait.”

She grabbed the lever to pull her own fighter out of hyperspace. Her hands were shaking. What was she doing?

She pulled her helmet off to catch her breath. Holding it in her hands, the thought of putting back on seemed stifling, but she needed to talk to the other ships in her squad.

“Lieutenant?” one of the stormtroopers asked her, “why are we stopping? General Hux ordered us to return to base, and the extraction ship left right after us.”

She paused for a moment. She knew what she’d heard. It seemed insane, but she knew stranger stories existed. She’d heard the girl’s voice in her head, pleading and begging. She’d felt her need. She’d felt the desperation.

“Did anyone else pick up an… anomalous communication?” she finally said, replacing her helmet. There was a few moments of dead air.

“A few pilots are reporting… some sort of sound,” the stormtrooper reported. “Several of them said they heard the Jedi girl.”

“Get me Captain Dorian’s ship,” Phalius commanded, “check to see if they had a similar report.”

“Sir, we’re getting reports of some sort of… disruption of Captain Dorian’s ship,” the stormtrooper said, checking the communications.

As he spoke, the crackling voice of General Hux broke into the cockpit.

“Lieutenant, why did you exit hyperspace?” he asked sharply, “your ships are needed in the Core.”

“General, I’m afraid there has been some sort of mistake,” Phalius said into the comms, “we may not have completed the extraction.”

“You have your orders,” Hux’s voice snapped, “so follow them and trust that there have been no mistakes.”

“I think…” she took a deep breath, “I think there have been several actually.”

And with that she shut him off.

“Turn around,” she ordered, “turn the whole squad around. We need to get back to Ilum.”

 

***

Jessika Pava jerked back to herself and then quickly spun her X-wing around a wave of plasma coming from the Yuuzhan Vong fighters. The First Order were supposed to be here, and yet they weren’t. Every ship that had poured out of the Unknown Regions was bearing down on what remained of the Resistance fleet and even with the shields, they weren’t going to make it. She’d never trusted that it was going to work. But at the very least she’d thought the First Order would protect their own Supreme Leader.

“Did anyone else just hear Rey?” she yelled into the comms.

“Affirmative, Black Leader,” a few of her squad reported.

“We’ve got to send someone, but we can’t spare even a ship here!” she said desperately.

“Black Leader,” another voice crackled into her ear. Vulwuaak from the cruiser. “Take your squad to Ilum. We’ll find a way to hold them.”

“Yes sir,” she said, “prepare to jump!”

But before she did she glanced back. The embattled cruiser and a few remaining corvettes huddled before ten more massive Yuuzhan Vong warships. She felt the fury rising in her stomach. She was leaving them to die. Whatever she did, she was leaving someone to die.

 

***

Maz Kanata scrambled up the side of a shuttle.

“Throw me that line,” she called down to the ground, “we need to get a gun on this thing fast!”

“We’ve launched all the ships with a hyperspace drive,” the Ithorian pilot yelled up to her. “This will be the last!”

“Well, start calling every friend we have out there!” Maz said, sparks flying around her as she began to weld on the cannon. “This isn’t a fight we can sit out!”

The skies of Takodana were filled with ships taking off. The castle was empty except for the last few ships preparing to launch. Half finished drinks sat on the tables.

She had to hope they were moving fast enough. What they had wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

 

***

DJ opened one bleary eye and winced as the bright morning sun of Canto Bight filled his vision.

It was, to be honest, pretty boring being rich. He could pass out in his own ship by noon and never have to worry about getting thrown in a cell. The company was bad and the parties were worse. And now on top of everything else, the galaxy was being invaded by terrifying monsters. Like he’d always said, it was pointless to take sides. The universe will just throw another army at you. Might as well get drunk while he still had money left.

But now he realized he was, in fact, being forcibly dragged out of his own ship. This was an interesting development. At the very least, it posed a bit of a mystery to figure out. If only he could get his other eye to open.

His head bumped against the ground and with a groan he managed to look up at the people dragging him.

They were children. He was being dragged out of the ship by three children.

“You guys are r-robbing me?” he managed to slur.

“We need your ship for a rescue mission,” the small boy holding his arm said.

“That’s… crazy, man,” DJ said, unable to process exactly what was happening and why. “Can you even fly a ship?”

“Yours is fancy,” a lanky young girl replied, “it can’t be much harder than riding a fathier.”

The children propped him up against a wall. He could see that they’d already ransacked his pockets. Well, he thought, it might be fun. Stealing a new ship once he sobered up.

“You have my blessing,” he slurred. It was nice to see kids taking an interest. They might make a pretty slick little gang someday.

He waved as he watched his ship soar away.

 

***

“What do you mean you need my ships?” Unkar Plutt protested to the gang of scavengers assembled at the window of the Concession Stand. “You’ll never even come close to what I paid for them!”

“We’re borrowing them,” the oldest scavenger said, her wrinkled face set and determined, “and we’re prepared to take on the debt.”

Unkar Plutt laughed a little, although unnerved by the scavengers lack of the usual subservience.

“You’ll be dead before you could even start to pay me back,” he chuckled to the old scavenger, “what would you even do with a ship anyways? Try to run off and leave me dry!”

“It’s Rey,” another scavenger answered, “the girl who used to live in the old AT-AT. We all heard her and she needs our help.”

“Rey,” Unkar Plutt said, his lip curling back into a snarl, “she stole my ship, got half of the outpost blown up, and stole a droid from the First Order. What do any of us owe to Rey?”

“It’s not about debt, Plutt!” the old scavenger woman said, slamming a fist down on the counter in front of him, “we’re all at risk. The Yuuzhan Vong may not be bothering with us yet, but they’re coming. And Rey can help, we all felt it! If you didn’t I don’t know how to explain it to you!”

“Well if you want to help her, you’ll have to find another ship,” Unkar Plutt said, starting to pull down the bars of the Concession Stand counter.

“Actually, we’ll be using yours,” said another voice from behind the group of scavengers. It was Constable Zuvio. He’d never made trouble with Unkar Plutt before. No one in Nima Outpost ever wanted to risk trouble with Unkar Plutt. “I’m confiscating your two largest armed transports under my authority as a constable. Seeing as my own ship is still out of commission, I’m afraid you’ll have to seek reparations from the regional office.”

Unkar Plutt shook his head before reluctantly searching to find the codes to the ships.

“You’ll all regret this,” he spat, leaving a trail of slime down his chins, “you’ll be eating pretty lightly when you get back.”

 

***

At first, none of them thought it would work. It couldn’t be done was the general consensus. Especially the First Order prisoners. They were for the most part very against the idea.

And yet, somehow, they figured it out. The ship rocked as it emerged from the water, roaring as the engines strained to lift the tanker from the sucking green below. But they made it out of the sea. And then, they made it through the clouds.

It was the first time any Phylein had left the moon. But the momentousness of the occasion was forgotten in their urgency. The control room was packed with damp greyish bodies and some of the stormtroopers they’d convinced to teach them the controls.

As the First Order tanker made the jump to hyperspace, a few Phyleins found themselves gazing out at the stars. If the Resistance could come to them for their own small problems, then the least they could do was bring their own small aid to the Resistance.

After all, if a small group of amphibians who’d been content for centuries to harvest algae and stay under the waves of their little moon could find themselves soaring through space, then what couldn’t they accomplish?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After making everything horrible happen at once last time, I hope this slightly makes up for it. The "bring back every minor character ever for the finale" trope is like a HUGE guilty pleasure of mine so I am fully indulging that here. Also I would like to point out that this is maybe the cutest Chewbacca moment I've ever written? The boy has fluff. It's going to tickle. 
> 
> Anyways, hope your heart is a little warmer now. Maybe do me a favor this time and just like... pass this along to JJ. Or if you've got his digits, help a girl out.


	17. In Flame

“This entire sector is swarming with guards,” Finn reported as he jogged back into the hanger from his brief scouting trip, “it won’t be long before they find us in here.”

“So we can’t use the same route we got in through,” Poe nodded, “but Rey can try to find this Onimi thing with the Force again.”

“Most of us won’t even make it down the first few hallways without getting taken down,” Finn said, “we should split up and see if we can draw the guards away while Rey finishes the job.”

Rey was finishing binding up the wound on her arm. While the thought of going alone was terrifying, the idea of using her friends as bait was even worse.

“Look, you should stay here in case anyone heard our message,” Rey said, “you shouldn’t have to die just because I want to take another one in a million shot.”

“If threepio was here, I’m sure he’d be happy to inform you that the odds are a lot worse than that if you go alone,” Lando said firmly, “leave your friends behind, but at least take me with you. I’m old. The rest of my friends have had their chance to make this sacrifice. I’ve outlived my usefulness.”

“We’d better make this plan faster,” Rose suggested from the doorway to the hanger, “because they’re getting too close for comfort.”

Rey made her way over to the door and she could indeed hear the distant sounds of a few Yuuzhan Vong patrols making their way down the hall.

“We hide,” Rey said, making the decision at least in the short term, “see if we can get them to clear this room and move on to other sectors.”

They all crowded behind one of the Yuuzhan Vong shuttles, taking care that not even the fluffy top of Chewbacca’s head was exposed. Rey held her breath as she heard the guard patrol get closer.

She had to get herself away from them. If Onimi was searching for her in the ship, she was like a flashing sign right over their hiding spot. Even if they hadn’t reached anyone, or worse, if they had and still no one was coming, she didn’t want to be the reason they were pinned down and slaughtered like animals.

The Yuuzhan Vong guards entered the hanger. From the sound of their footsteps, Rey decided there must be five or six of them. She wasn’t sure exactly how the guards communicated at a short range, but she was pretty certain that leaping out and trying to take them by surprise would only serve to summon more.

The sound of footsteps drew closer. They seemed to be making a rotation straight down the middle. If they were lucky, the Yuuzhan Vong would simply turn around and go straight back out. That was, of course, if they didn’t have some sort of hyper smell or some genetically enhanced vibration sensors.

The Yuuzhan Vong reached the back of the hanger, right beside the shuttle where they were hiding. Rey could see their feet, clad in the shiny black carapace. She held her breath.

And then the feet turned around and started to move back out of the room. Rey gently let the breath out as quietly as she could.

“Resistance, this is Lieutenant Phalius returning to complete extraction,” a voice suddenly blared from the comlink in Rose’s pocket, “Repeat, this is Phalius, any remaining infiltration team please respond!”

Rey let out a long sigh of simultaneous relief and deep exasperation. She popped up to her feet and extended both sides of her lightsaber to dispatch the six guards now racing towards them. The rest of them fired their blasters while she blocked a blow from one of the Yuuzhan whips before whirling the other side of the saber around to dispatch its wielder.

“Phalius, come in!” Rose was yelling over the blaster fire, “we’re still in the hanger we came in at!”

“Heading to your position now,” the woman’s voice reported, “I’ve only got TIE fighters so it’ll be tight getting everyone out, but there’s a destroyer coming right behind me.”

Rey looked down sharply at that. Rose’s eyes had bugged out a little.

“How many ships heard us?” Rose asked hesitantly, “and how many are out there?”

“I’m not sure,” Phalius said, “more are jumping in all around me. I’m not even sure who some of them are.”

“Scan the other channels,” Poe ordered, and Rose obeyed.

“Come in, repeat, this is Black Leader calling any Resistance survivors on the base ship-”

“This is First Order transit Adversus calling infiltration team, we have space on our ship for-”

“Resistance heroes, this is the Broodmother of Phylia offering any assistance-”

“Rey! Come in! We’re searching for a girl named Rey!”

“Frigate Proditor, we are offering support for-”

“Come in Resistance, this is a rescue party-”

Rey closed her eyes and reached out. Beyond the blankness of the Yuuzhan Vong ship around her, she could feel ship after ship coming out of hyperspace. She felt something warm growing in her chest and for a moment she could barely breathe through the lump forming in her throat. They’d all come back. Even people who had never met her. None of them had abandoned her.

And she wasn’t about to let them down. And she wasn’t going to leave anyone behind.

“Now this,” Poe said, a smile spreading across his face, “this is a good distraction.”

“I knew it! I knew she’d be back!” Finn was whooping, pumping his fist in the air, “and even the Phyleins managed to get that tanker out of the water!”

“Didn’t one of those sound like a bunch of children?” Lando asked, sounding a little unnerved.

Chewbacca growled something to the effect that it appeared to be so.

Around them, the Yuuzhan Vong ship suddenly began to pulse with a reddish light.

“I think they’ve noticed the little party happening outside,” Rose said, “what should I tell those ships?”

All of them looked at Rey. She took a deep breath.

“Tell them mission is not yet complete,” she finally said, “fire on the baseship with everything they’ve got.”

It took only a few seconds after Rose relayed the command before the floor of the hanger began to shudder. Rey turned to the door and kept her lightsaber extended.

“I’m coming,” she snarled, feeling the faint tickle of Onimi somewhere in the ship, “just try to run.”

 

***

“We just lost an entire destroyer!” Hux screamed, storming into the bridge. General Avadear spun around from his position. He took his hat off and clenched it in his hands for a moment. How could this happen?

“Lost to the Yuuzhan Vong or-?” General Avadear began.

“Lost as in half of the crew defected and commandeered the ship to go help the Resistance fleet you decided to leave on the edge of the Unknown Regions!” Hux spat. His face was marble white with anger, and a healthy dose of fear. “This was your plan, Avadear, you were the one to suggest holding back our ships until the Resistance was finished off!”

“My plan?” Avadear’s control on his temper was fraying. He grabbed Hux by the front of his uniform and yanked him close, “my plan? You all begged me to take a stand against Ren! And I was supposed to know somehow that half of my ships would get a psychic message from some magical girl asking for help? And that they would actually go?”

The other bridge officers had all gone silent now and were staring at them.

“We’re going to lose the war unless you do something!” Hux said, jerking himself back out of Avadear’s grasp.

But Gaitus Avadear was out of ideas. There was no training for this situation. Nothing about it made any sense.

“Fine,” Hux said savagely, “if you won’t do what has to be done, I will.”

He turned to the rest of the bridge officers and grabbed the communications specialist by his shoulder roughly.

“Send an order to fire on any ships attempting to leave their position,” he said, “and immediately terminate any troops who fail to comply with the order.”

The communications officer stared up at Hux. Avadear could see what was about to happen before the man even replied.

“I’m sorry sir,” the communications officer said in a shaky voice, “but I cannot carry out any command that could be considered treason to the First Order.”

Hux drew the blaster from his belt and held it to the officer’s head.

“Kylo Ren is dead,” he hissed, “I am the highest authority in the First Order. If you can’t bring yourself to carry out the order, then I will shoot you and find someone who will.”

The communications officer swallowed and with a trembling hand reached out to activate a push to the whole fleet.

“First Order fleet, this is Incinerator,” he said slowly, “order from the High Command… all reserve ships engage Yuuzhan Vong- repeat, pull out of reserve positions and engage-”

Hux fired before he had finished, but the damage was done. The communications officer slumped down onto the floor, but the rest of the bridge crew were not rushing to fill his place.

Avadear leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. It was finished.

 

***

Rey skidded onto her knees as the base ship was rocked by yet another wave of fire. The force of the blast had shaken the whole hallway this time and several walls now had large cracks splitting down the coral shell.

“We’re close!” she yelled, clambering back to her feet and giving Rose a hand back up.

“This isn’t where we were before!” Finn said as he took off running again.

“Because we’re not looking for the throne room,” Rey replied, “Onimi can’t become the Overlord because he’s Shamed, he’ll just make whoever’s been chosen his puppet. He’ll be wherever Ben is, getting ready to… add to his power.”

“I don’t know what that means, but I assume it’s disgusting,” Poe said as they hurtled around another corner.

“Guards up ahead!” Lando warned.

They were approaching another door surrounded by Yuuzhan Vong warriors, although they seemed somewhat distracted by what appeared to be a vein in the wall of the ship leaking some sort of clear fluid. Whatever damage the ragtag fleet outside was doing, it was rippling throughout the ship.

“Cover me and then follow,” Rey ordered them as she charged towards the guards. She managed to slice two of them at the knee joint of their armor and then slide past them to the door itself. It was heavier and sealed tighter than most of the others where they could simply shoot their way through. Her lightsaber simply deflected away from the black shell, and it would take more time than they had to dig through the wall around it.

However, she thought, there might be an easier way.

As one of the Yuuzhan Vong warriors lashed at her from behind, she turned and caught the creature by the arm. With a wrenching motion, she jerked it forward and cut it off at the shoulder.

Having thus armed herself, she lashed at the door membrane with the Yuuzhan Vong whip. The end of it sank into the soft tissue at the rim of the door, and slowly the black carapace loosened and opened.

Behind her, the rest of them had finished off the remaining Yuuzhan Vong guards.

“Stay back,” she warned her friends as they joined her at the door, “you know what Onimi is capable of doing with the Force.”

“We’re right behind you,” Finn assured her.

Rey yanked the massive doors open and stepped into the room.

She was in a long hall with a cavernous high ceiling. If the throne room had been the heart of the ship, this was its nervous system. Rather than being decorated, it was covered in Yuuzhan Vong technology so densely the walls looked like a web or maybe even a shifting, swirling circuit board.

The room was also lined with what appeared to be tough fluid sacs inside of which, Rey could make out a few shadowy creatures stirring slightly. This must be how they grew the organisms they used once they’d been genetically designed for their purpose.

There were doors on the sides of the hallway as well and as Rey came bursting into the room she saw a few Yuuzhan Vong exiting one room freeze as they saw her. They weren’t warriors, but they were tall and heavily modified. The two of them staring at her had added several long dangling feelers to the tops of their heads, perhaps to aid in surgery judging by the blood splattered up their forearms. This had to be where the Shapers, as they called themselves, made new creations.

“I thought you might come back,” a voice said from the end of the long room. Omini was standing there. Small. Unassuming. Unarmed. “Your friend, he was begging for you, until of course… well he’s fairly quiet now...”

“I’m taking him back,” Rey said stiffly, raising her lightsaber and widening her stance. “And I’m killing you. I gave you a chance before, but never again.”

“You know I feel the goddess moving in you. The one who walks in many skins and changes her face. Yun-Harla, who cursed me even as she gave me power beyond what I could have imagined,” Onimi said, stepping forward a little. “I’d love to get inside that mind of yours and find her.”

Rey gritted her teeth as she felt the Force squeeze in on her, prying at her mind. She set herself to defend against him and then ran forward with her lightsaber raised.

“How disappointing,” Onimi said, and he raised one clawed hand.

Immediately, the side doors opened and the other Shapers poured out to defend him. They were no warriors, but Rey got the sense from their vacant expressions that Onimi had torn every bit of self-preservation away from their thoughts.

“We’ve got this!” Finn called from behind her and she glanced over her shoulder to see her friends bursting into the room.  
Rey watched Onimi’s eyes flick briefly towards them, but before he had the chance to harm them, Rey swung her lightsaber down towards his head with all her strength.

A wave of pure blue lightning exploded out from his body, sending her flying back and across the floor. She flipped back up to her feet, and saw that his whole body was arching with Force lightning. Not as unarmed as she thought.

As she paused to get her bearings, something caught her by the wrists and yanked her into the air. Rey looked to see that the various tubes and sinews embedded into the walls of the room had wrapped around her wrists. Onimi quirked his head to the side slightly and suddenly her skin began to burn beneath where they touched her.

“I invented this one myself,” he admitted, “a bit of the God’s curse, a bit of my work as a Shaper, and I can rearrange electrons into some rather unexpected new chemical compositions.”

He was, Rey realized with amazement, using the Force on Yuuzhan Vong technology. Whatever accident had given him his ability, she realized, must also allow him to use the Force on his own kind, even though she was unable to. That must be how he was still in control of the ship as well as its inhabitants. If he had part of a yammosk in his brain, he was, in a sense, made from his own ship.

Before the suddenly acidic tendrils could burn further into her wrists, Rey swung her legs to the side and let her lightsaber drop from her hand, clamping it between her knees and using the Force to switch it on as soon as her legs had swung back towards the other tendril wrapped around her wrist. The lightsaber severed one side and she quickly grabbed it with her free hand to release the tendril on the other.

She landed in a crouch and took a moment to further strengthen her mental barrier against Onimi. She had to maintain her defenses or he’d pin her again and she’d be helpless.

But as soon as she was back on her feet, she was fighting threats from every side. The walls around her seemed to explode and she whirled the double bladed lightsaber to keep thousands more worms and fibers and tentacles from wrapping around her. Some of the fluid filled sacs exploded open and half-finished organisms crawled towards her, some barely more than a slime of cells. A whole tangled brood of half-grown Yuuzhan Vong amphistaffs struggled and snapped at her ankles.

And beyond the chaos, Onimi was still there, sending waves of lightning out towards her and mentally pounding away at her defenses. He was too strong, she thought desperately as she barely deflected a bolt away from her head. If he had the whole living ship at his disposal, how could she hope to keep him out? He was one with his very environment.

Use the Force, something deep inside her said. But how could she? She couldn’t sense the ship or the other Yuuzhan Vong as he could. She couldn’t even use it on him. The Force was useless to her here.

Use the Force, the thought came again. The Force is you. The Force binds us together.

Rey slid to the floor as something pulled her foot out from under her. For a moment she stared transfixed at it. The long ridged claw of some half finished animal that had been dragged prematurely out of gestation. She watched it for a second as she felts its grip wavering. It was dying, she realized. It wasn’t formed well enough yet to survive out in the air.

Rey took a deep breath.

Against her rational mind, she turned back towards Onimi and lowered her weapon. She lowered her defenses. She swept away every bit of reserve or protection she had built for herself until she was completely open. And not only open, she reached out. She sought him and once she’d found him in the Force, she reached further. She let her mind search farther and farther.

To her friends behind her, still fighting. She felt their fear and their devotion and she put them back in her head, just as she’d done when she reached out to call the ships. And she reached further and let in the ships outside. And she reached for each speck of dust and each wave of light passing through the void and put them inside of herself as well.

And the further she reached, the less she felt like Rey. She was Rey and she was Finn and she was Poe and she was Rose and she was Chewbacca and she was Lando. And she was a ship. And she was the far away tug of Ilum’s gravity. And she was a magnetic wave travelling through the darkness.

And then, finally, she was Onimi the Yuuzhan Vong.

She let Rey’s body stand and walk forward. The ship was Onimi and now she was the ship. Whenever he lashed out, she ducked beneath. Whenever he sent a wave of lightning towards her, she stepped aside. It was like breathing, it was suddenly so easy. She could not control him. But she could become him.

She could become the Force within him.

As she drew closer, she felt him and herself in him becoming afraid. He staggered back as she stepped in front of him. He faltered and the pieces of the ship he had been controlling sank to the floor or slid down the walls.

She stepped closer, wanting to close the distance that seperated their bodies. To be closer to herself. To become One.

“How are you-?” Onimi said and she asked the question to herself.

“I understand,” she said with Rey’s mouth, and then she switched off the lightsaber in her hand.

“Rey, what are you doing?” Poe was yelling from behind her, “finish this!”

“Snap out of it!” Finn said and she felt him running towards her. She understood their intention. They thought she hesitated because he’d won her over. But there was no winning or losing. There was balance between them. She could no sooner kill him than she could tell her own heart to stop beating.

“Stop this,” she said and felt the part of her that was Onimi finally relent. The lightning faded away from his body and the grip he held over the minds of the other Shapers released.

“You can’t spare his life, Rey, I know you don’t want to, but-” Rose was pleading with her.

“I’m not sparing life,” Rey murmured, “I am with him in the Force. This is not life or death. This is balance.”

She turned back towards them and saw that they had advanced, blasters drawn. She knew they were all waiting for a clear shot, but she wouldn’t let them have it.

With a single motion, she pulled the blasters from their hands and send them skidding out across the floor in front of her.

She reached out curiously and pressed her palm against the Yuuzhan Vong’s claw. She felt it from both sides. She felt his rage and his pain and his wish to tear her apart just as she felt her own compassion.

“Rey please,” Finn begged her, “you have to end this!”

She looked back at him and shook her head.

But as soon as she had turned, she felt a blast of white hot pain puncture Onimi’s skull and sizzle through each neuron. Rey screamed as she felt herself thrown roughly back into her own mind and body.

She turned back to the Yuuzhan Vong and clasped him in her arms as he fell, eyes blank and body limp. She was only herself now. Just Rey. Rey, who was no one in particular. Onimi was elsewhere now.

“Why?” she choked out, still reeling from the shock.

As she looked up over the Yuuzhan Vong’s corpse, she saw him.

Kylo Ren, barely supporting himself in the doorframe of one of the side rooms. There was blood running down his face from his temple and what looked like a fresh scar on his hairline. He was barefoot, his shirt ripped open and a few lesions visible on his chest and neck where they’d had him hooked up to something.

His face was blank, emotionless, and completely cold as he held the blaster in one hand.

As she watched he let his legs fold and he slid slowly down the wall, but it was like there was nothing there. His connection to the Force was scooped out, amputated. He let the blaster roll out of his hand like he was dreaming. His eyes unfocused and he let himself simply lie there for a moment.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, “Ben, please, I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t look up when she spoke. It was like there was nothing there at all now that he’d used up whatever vengeful instinct had dragged him to his feet before.

The ship around them was shaking now, and there was a low groan coming from a few decks below.

“We need to get out of here,” Poe ordered, “Rose, call someone to pick us up!”

The floor buckled a little in the center and Rey let the body of Onimi slide out of her arms. She had someone else she needed to carry now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final action set piece wooo. Thank ya'll so much for coming on this journey with me, I truly appreciate each and every person who has taken the time to send comments or kudos. Tune in next time for some denouement, some wrap up, some emotional resolution, etc!
> 
> Also I sincerely apologize for using the phrase "slaughtered like animals" in a Star Wars fanfic. I know. I know.


	18. The Light

Finn woke up slowly in the grey dawn of Chandrila. The room was dark and outside the city was still quiet but for the occasional low buzz of a passing vehicle several stories down. He let himself lie there for a moment with his eyes still closed, his face cool and his body warm under the blankets.

Lying beside him, the body of Poe Dameron seemed to radiate heat. One of his hands lay across Finn’s arm. As Finn considered Poe’s sleeping face, his long lashes, the way his brow was left smooth and untroubled, he wished he could let him stay like that forever. But the room around them was already starting to wake them up. The window was gradually reducing the tint and soon the pale sun of Hanna City would be filtering into the room.

By now, nearly a month after the defeat of the Yuuzhan Vong, their wounds had all healed and the galaxy had settled into something resembling peace. The upper sectors were still in ruins and the Yuuzhan Vong remnant was still out there in the Unknown Regions, but Finn at least had not been called to jump back into a ship and fight.

The First Order had shattered after the mass defections during the invasion and their leadership had imploded as each member of the High Command tried to take control of the various remaining fragments. The Resistance, on the other hand, had come out of the battle vastly depleted, but massively popular amongst the common people of the galaxy. While neither side was well equipped to fight and the Yuuzhan Vong were merely turned away rather than routed, things had slipped dangerously towards a civil war for a few days.

But then they had broken the cycle.

The light in the room became brighter and Poe stirred a little.

“Is it today?” he asked roughly, the dread palpable even as he was only half out of sleep.

“Yeah,” Finn said gently, “we should get ready.”

“I don’t want to go,” Poe sighed, rubbing his face with his hand, “but I know I need to be there. It just feels like more pointless ceremony in a week where I’ve already had to attend four unity displays and two public declarations of restoration.”

“Just because there isn’t a body doesn’t make it pointless,” Finn said firmly, “besides, if you don’t her ghost is probably going to give you Force pox or something.”

“I feel like if Rey were here she might question that,” Poe snorted, brightening just a bit.

“Even if it is a big political move, she deserves to be remembered by everyone,” Finn said, “because she fought for everyone even when they would have executed her for it.”

“I get it, okay,” Poe snapped. Finn backed off a little. They were getting better used to giving one another the space they needed. And when the squabbles did inevitably happen, well, they usually ended pretty well.

“Fancy uniforms again?” Finn asked, stretching and swinging his feet out of bed.

“Of course, we’ve gotta look good for the holonet,” Poe replied, “we’re the pretty young faces of the New Coalition.”

“It’s almost nice when you flirt like that,” Finn sighed, “except you always find a way to include yourself in the compliment.”

After they’d gotten themselves together, and of course Poe had to stop to give BB-8 a complete scrub down before they left the building, they took the rail line down to the city center where the Coalition senate was slowly reforming. It would be a while until the transitional government was ready to give way, but the elections for Chancellor would be ready by the end of the month.

Finn looked up out of the car as they rode. The sky was overcast but bright and the temperature was mild. The planet’s weather seemed insistent on refusing to conform to the mood of the occasion. That was part of the problem of Chandrila. As they totalled the war dead and counted out reparations and put together joint tribunals, outside of the senate building it was always bright and pleasant. Even when they’d finally brought General Hux in, cuffed and spitting at his guards, the sun had shone.

As soon as they drew close to the senate buildings, Finn could already tell with some anxiety that this event would be something different than the others. The crowd was massive. People squeezed into the passenger car one after the other until there was no more room. The sky above was filled with landing shuttles.

“I guess not everyone is watching from home,” Finn said in amazement, “do you think Jess and the others who left with her will come?”

“Pava? She’ll be here. She’ll complain, but she’ll be here. Even if she thinks we’ve been too lenient, this isn’t politics for her,” Poe scoffed, pressing closer to Finn as more people tried to join their train car.

When they finally came to the city center stop, the crowd flooded out with such power that Finn and Poe had to fight to get through to the security entrance for the senate building without being swept out into the plaza beyond.

“Finn! Poe!” a voice called out from the crowd and they both turned to see Rose shoving her way towards them. She wasn’t so shy now about ramming her shoulders and elbows into people stepping over her feet and she made quick progress over to the entrance. “Am I late?”

“No, I think the crowd is just somewhat larger than anticipated,” Finn said raising his eyebrows.

Rose smiled a little and then blinked rapidly.

“Oh no,” she said, mouth crumpling slightly, “I’m already crying. This is bad. I need to be dignified.”

Poe stiffened up and Finn grabbed onto his hand. If he couldn’t handle Rose, he definitely wasn’t going to handle the sound of Chewbacca’s entire family in mourning.

“How’s the ship going?” Finn said to change the subject as the guards scanned them and let them through to the senate building.

“It’s coming along,” Rose shrugged, “I’ve never done a custom build this big before, but Rey pretty amazing at finding ways to make it work. In another few months, it might actually fly. And of course, there might actually be a few young Jedi to train.”

“Is Rey here already?” Poe asked.

“She left earlier than I did,” Rose said, “she said she needed to meet with Lando, er, sorry, with Interim Chancellor Calrissian.”

Finn couldn’t help but grin a little at the name. Lando hated the sound of it. Lando hated the whole idea of it.

They made there way up and out to the front steps of the building which had been cordoned off from the waiting crowds in the plaza and lining the fronts of the nearby buildings. For such a large number of beings present in one place, the murmur was oddly subdued.

Finn felt Poe squeeze his hand tighter as they both saw the platform with the memorial. They’d all decided a statue felt wrong. Instead, what was left to commemorate Leia Organa, absent of a body probably disintegrated into dust months before as the Yuuzhan Vong baseship collapsed, was a simple obelisk in plain white stone.

“Get them up front,” Lando ordered as soon as he spotted the three of them out on the steps, “we want everyone together for the press.”

He was dressed in black, although he had of course opted for a sweeping cape lined with brilliantly contrasting white.

“You’re positive you aren’t going to run for Chancellor, Lando?” Rose said with a smirk as she eyed the outfit.

“Stop it, I’ve told you, I’m just taking the steps I need to so that we actually fix our problems this time,” he snapped, arranging the three of them at his left side. “That’s all old relics like me are good for. We remember the stupid things we did so we can try not to do them again.”

“Well, you did convince the senate to pardon almost the entire First Order,” Finn said, “which did convince most of them to turn their leadership in without a fuss. I wouldn’t undersell that too much.”

“I’d certainly vote for him,” a woman’s voice came from behind them and the recently appointed Interim Vice-Chancellor Phalius stepped up on Lando’s right side. Finn still found it strange to see her out of uniform. She seemed even taller somehow without the armor and her white-blonde hair curled around her face without being crushed down by a helmet.

“Are more of you coming?” Poe asked, failing to keep some of the hostility out of his voice. While around Finn he mostly seemed to tolerate the former stormtroopers, but here his sense of loyalty had been stretched too far.

“Just me, Dameron,” she assured him formally. They took care to step lightly around one another, “I’m here to pay respects. I know we didn’t have an extensive acquaintance, but I wouldn’t feel right skipping it.”

Most of the other former First Order members of the senate had been the ones who’d been able to fully renounce the deeds and beliefs of their organization, while the rest had been carefully disarmed, disbanded, and sent for evaluation to try to undo the damage their training had programmed into them. Finn had taken the lead on this part of the process. He was still getting used to the idea of being in charge of other people, but at the same time, he was too concerned with getting it all absolutely perfect to let anyone else take command. These were, after all, the lives of thousands of his former compatriots, all suddenly made into traitors just as he had been.

“Where’s Rey?” Finn asked Lando. “Shouldn’t she be with you?”

“She said she needed something before we start,” Lando said, nervously glancing through the rows of people. C-3PO and R2-D2 had even joined them on the other side, although both of them were oddly quiet.

“I’m here!” Rey’s voice called and she breathlessly jogged up beside them. She was dressed in formal Jedi robes she’d had fashioned and her hair was wrapped into two buns on either side of her face. “Just needed something from the Falcon.”

“We’ll begin, then,” Lando said and stepped forward.

“Welcome all to the commemoration of the memory of General Leia Organa of Alderaan. General Organa was a senator, a military leader, and of course, a rebel. She fought tirelessly throughout her life for justice in our galaxy and she gave her life in service to us against the Yuuzhan Vong. It is in her memory that we join together to banish tyranny, to rebuild democracy, and to heal the wounds of war and hatred. Leia was my friend. She was my princess. And most importantly, she was our hope.”

Rey stepped forward, and cleared her throat nervously a few times. That was typical Rey, Finn thought as he felt a swell of affection for her. She was always just a little afraid of her own strength, while he was simply dazzled by it.

“When we have to say goodbye to someone,” she said, her voice faltering just slightly, “it can feel like we have nothing left. But Leia Organa is not gone from us. She remains… connected. Inside of us all. She remains someone who we must live up to. We must promise to work tirelessly even when the odds look impossible. We must promise to love fiercely even when the cost feels too high. We must promise to be better even when it hurts. Leia did not just defend the light. She was the light. And we must carry that forward.”

As Rey spoke, the overcast sky grew dark and Finn felt the air getting close. Beside him he could feel Poe shaking to try to keep himself from breaking down. For Finn, the general had been a figure of respect, even reverence, but he knew it was different for Poe. For him, his general had been teacher, leader, guide, and even family all in one.

Rey stepped up to the base of the obelisk and laid something beneath it. Finn could make out a pair of dice, plated with gold.

As soon as she’d laid them down, the sky broke and rain poured down onto the crowd. But no one left. No one moved as the first storm in weeks swept over Hanna City.

As the storm clouds obscured the sun and plunged the plaza and the steps over the senate into a gloomy dusk, the tip of the obelisk began to glow. It grew and expanded until it was nearly blinding and all of them were bathed in the light.

Finn let the tears run down his face alongside the rain. He felt Poe beside him hunch forward as the long restrained sobs finally came and he wrapped his arms around him. He pressed the other man’s head into his shoulder and they waited through the singing and the speeches and the processions.

When the rain finally stopped and the ceremony was finally over, Finn and Poe remained sitting on the now empty steps. The stone was slippery from the downpour and Finn shivered a little in the chill.

“We should go home,” Poe finally said, starting to move his head from where it had been resting against Finn’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to-”

“I’m not sorry,” Finn interrupted him, “because even when you’re sobbing and we have to remember that the universe is terrible and scary, this is where I want to be.”

“Sitting in the rain ruining the fancy uniforms?” Poe asked with a faint smile.

“They’ll give me another fancy uniform,” Finn said dismissively, “it’s only this one jacket I really like anyways.”

“It always was my favorite jacket,” Poe remarked, starting to stand up, “I hope you appreciate that. I mean, no hard feelings, but the pocket space on that thing was fantastic.”

“Didn’t need that much space for this though,” Finn said, and pulled something out from the pocket of his uniform. He watched as Poe’s eyes widened.

“You kept it,” he whispered, as Finn held out his mother’s ring.

“Did you think I just threw it away in the middle of a weird gross living ship?” Finn said, unable to contain a bit of indignance at the comment. “Of course I kept it! I’m trying to ask if you want it back!”

“Wait, wait,” Poe asked, raising his hands and looking somewhat flabbergasted. “Is this what I think it is?”

“If you want it to be,” Finn said with a hopeful smile, “I just thought… well, I’m sure now. This is it. You’re it. I want to just have something… good.”

“I-” Poe said and then trailed off. He turned around and then whirled back to face Finn. “I cannot believe this. I cannot believe the idiocy of this whole situation. You just tried to re-propose to me after the extremely traumatic funeral of one of the greatest people in the entire galaxy. And you thought this was romantic? How did you anticipate this going? I’m curious, I’m really curious!”

Finn’s face fell. What had he been thinking? There was no amount of romantic inexperience that he could use to cover a mistake this egregious.

“Oh no,” he said, “wait. You’re right. This was a terrible idea.”

“I mean I guess I’ll say yes,” Poe snapped, “but only because I feel really sorry for you.”

Finn groaned, but couldn’t help it as a huge smile spread across his face. Poe pulled him up to his feet, but before their lips could meet they were interrupted by the sound of an impatient BB-8 rolling up behind them to enquire when exactly they planned on leaving.

“Listen, you know I love BB-8, but please don’t let him take this moment from me,” Finn protested.

“A droid wedding, now that’s a thought. He’s going to throw flowers,” Poe sighed with happiness, “and I can get R2 to launch the ring to me. And C-3PO can officiate-”

“That is absolutely going too far,” FInn stopped him there and then kissed him to shut him up.

 

***

Rey waited at the massive blast doors as the locks scanned her identification. She let the sensors pass over her face. She had pulled her hair back tightly and the faint white scar on her cheekbone where she’d nearly been impaled with her own lightsaber stood out clearly. Her arm also bore a mark where Shimrra’s amphistaff had wrapped around her. Even healed, she carried the marks.

And she carried other burdens as well, although invisible to see. She knew she ought to be happy today. It was a day to celebrate. The elections were over without incident. Her ship was ready to take off whenever she wanted to. Rose and any other creatures willing, strong with the Force or not, would embark with her and work to protect the galaxy. And her friends were getting married in a few hours.

But there was still work to do. There was a new world forming with new children to rise up and be trained. There were new rules and new ways to create.

There was a new Jedi order to reform.

And she wasn’t ready to abandon the Yuuzhan Vong yet. She had to believe there was a way they could be healed. That they could still be connected to the Force.

The doors opened and Rey stepped into an elevator where she had to enter a long series of codes before it began to move. When she reached the bottom, a secure vault not even recorded on the maps, the guards parted to allow her through.

She’d been here nearly every day at first. While secrecy was paramount, especially when the situation with the First Order was still delicate, Rey hadn’t been able to stop herself from checking again and again.

At the end of the hallway was another pair of the doors, the first one guarded, and the second merely monitored by camera. At first, they’d had a full medical team down here around the clock. But eventually, there’d been nothing more to try. While for the first few weeks he’d been essentially comatose, he had gradually begun to at least perform the basic requirements for life. His condition was stable. And his mind… well, he barely said a word.

The final door slid open and Rey stepped into the room.

There weren’t any window, which at first had struck her as cruel despite the practical necessity. It was fairly large, at least. Space enough for privacy.

He was sitting where he usually was in a single hard chair beside the ledge of plants Rey had brought over the many weeks of visiting. It had been the only thing she could think of. The only thing she could imagine craving. A bit of green.

After so long spent in here he had lost weight. His clothes hung off of him where once he’d been strong and menacing and his cheeks had a hollow look. He wore the same dark grey robes they’d given him as soon as the medical droids had removed the tattered remnants of his black garments.

When Rey entered, she saw his eyes flick over to her for a brief second before continuing his contemplation of the small garden in front of him.

“I’m going to be leaving soon,” she announced, squatting next to the chair where he sat. “So you’d better talk to me or you won’t get another shot.”

He remained quiet, but one of his hands reached up absently to rub at the scar on his temple. It was a sort of compulsive habit he seemed to have picked up as the tissue healed.

“Come on, Ben, I’m serious,” she sighed, “you can’t stay here under guard forever. I mean, they aren’t going to kick you out or anything, but we need to make a plan.”

“Where will you go?” he said slowly. His voice always sounded slightly hoarse now. Like he was just discovering he could speak at all.

“Anywhere I need to. Anywhere that needs me,” Rey said, gently pulling his hand down from his temple, “come with me. I know I can find a way to fix you. To fix all of the Yuuzhan Vong and bring them back to the Force.”

He jerked his wrist away from her grip and folded his arm around his stomach.

“Don’t say that,” he finally replied.

Rey felt her eyes welling with tears. Despite everything he’d done, despite every horror he was directly responsible for, she couldn’t help but think that no one deserved this. If he had died it would have been easier, a deeply buried part of her said. But to have been so immersed in the Force, to have trained his entire life, to have the blood of the Skywalkers, and then to have it all torn away. It was unimaginable.

“If you feel guilty, then stop it,” she pleaded, “most people think you’re dead. A trial would only have made things worse, Ben, I promise you. Come with me.”

He silently shook his head.

Rey stood up, frustrated. A few of the tears spilled down onto her cheeks.

“I’ve worked so hard to save you,” she finally managed to say around the lump in her throat, “and so many others. And I feel them. I feel them here and now! Luke. Your father. Your mother. You have so much light leading your way, why won’t you just try?”

“Please,” he said, his voice trembling slightly, “just stop.”

“No!” she shouted back at him, “you’ve had so many chances. You don’t just get to throw this one away so you can wallow!”

She tried to calm her breathing after the outburst. It hurt to be in the room with him like this. Not when she could remember so clearly the feeling of it. Of being connected. And now he was just… gone.

“It’s hard for me to… say things. To say things the way I mean them,” he finally said. It was perhaps more words than he’d strung together in weeks. “At first it was so confusing. Everything felt wrong. I’m still trying to… relearn. And that’s why I can’t go with you. Why I don’t want you to fix me.”

“I don’t understand,” Rey said, sitting down beside him again wearily. She looked up and saw that a few tears had run down his face as well.

“I lost everything that made me who I was,” he said and his voice broke a little on the last word, “and it has to stay that way. Because all that power was destroying me. I shouldn’t have it back. It makes me… worse. It isn’t just guilt, I’m- I’m afraid that the Force would make me that person again. Even if you could, I can’t have it back. Without the Force, without that connection, without that… legacy looming over me, I’m… better.”

Now it was Rey’s turn not to have any words to say.

“I need to relearn how to be a person,” he finally said, wiping his face with his sleeve. “No destiny. No power.”

Rey smiled a little through her tears. She could understand that. Sometimes the things that you thought might destroy you instead left you free. Free from the burden of your fear.

“Alright,” she finally agreed, “then go learn. But don’t learn by staring at a plant. Go somewhere else.”

He looked up with a faint crease forming between his brows.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean that I’m giving you the access codes to leave when you’re ready,” Rey said, pulling a card from her satchel, “and one more thing. I guess it technically does belong to you. That part of your past you can’t just cut out.”

She grabbed his hand and pressed a gravity lock remote into it.

“What does it…?” he began, staring down at the device. His expression abruptly lost some of the blank numbness of the past months and morphed into a look of shock as he slowly understood.

“For the Falcon, of course,” Rey said, turning to leave. “Make sure to keep an eye on that left hydrogen shift valve. It acts up sometimes with new pilots.”

***

The party after the wedding lasted late into the night. They held it outside in the gardens and as the sun went down, they lit hundreds of torches and strands of lights in the trees. Rey drank something that made her head swim although most of the food was so spicy as to be inedible to her. Rose taught her to dance in what she swore was a traditional style on Hays Minor. She had to carry an intoxicated Chewbacca back to his family after the first hour.

Poe somehow convinced her to perform an impromptu show where he threw random objects at her and she had to cut them in half with her lightsaber. She suspected he was just somewhat entranced by the weapon, although when she offered he was too nervous to hold it. The game had to stop when she nearly decapitated C-3PO by accident and he delivered on a long lecture on how a lightsaber was not a toy.

Finn was an anxious wreck for most of the event, but Rey coaxed him slowly into enjoying the party. At the very least, she could make a fool of herself and eventually persuade him to laugh. By the end of the night, however, he had draped himself happily over Poe and she decided that her work was done.

BB-8 bumped into her ankles as she was returning from getting another drink.

“They aren’t leaving you out,” Rey reassured the droid, “besides, you’ve got me to keep you company.”

She sat on the low ledge surrounding the garden and looked up to the stars and the lights of the city around them. Ships were taking off far away from the ports and soaring up over them through the atmosphere. BB-8 whistled softly.

“It is very bright,” she agreed.

As she spoke, she heard the faint sound of another ship passing over head. She craned her neck to see it as it passed. A grin spread across her face. She could recognize that ship anywhere.

The Millenium Falcon swooped over the party, up, and out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for reading and sticking it out through this whole wild ride. Hopefully this ending is completely satisfying! 
> 
> Please leave a comment and in return I promise to continue generating content!


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